The Nomads
by Scribbler
Summary: Egypt is in turmoil. Prince Atem awaits his coronation, uncertain and grieving, while treachery seems poised to end his reign early. Téana is a nomad runaway determined to live life on her own terms. Then a chance encounter changes their futures forever.
1. Prologue: The Legacy of the Women

**Disclaimer****:** Historically not mine.

**A/N****:** This is part of a project I started writing in 2006, though at this time I didn't realise it was going to become big enough to be termed a 'project'. _Sisters Under the Skin _was supposed to be a short vignette, but in October 2008 I went back and expanded on what I started there, creating _Sometimes It's Got to Hurt Before You Feel_ and _Escape to the Stars. _Pretty soon it was another case of darn-it-the-stupid-thing-got-away-from-me-again! and I was sunk. Consequently, some aspects of this fic may seem familiar at first, but trust me when I say that they've been altered enough to fit in with the wider continuity that has sprung up around this storyline. You don't have to have read any of those fics to understand this one.

This has become the biggest single fic I have ever undertaken in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Fandom, and has turned me into Research Girl™ since last October when I started writing it. There's a reason why I've taken so long to venture into the Ancient Egypt arc with my fanfic, and it's mostly to do with messing up any semblance of historical accuracy. Therefore, feedback isn't just welcome, it's begged for.

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_**The Nomads**_

© Scribbler, October 2008/April 2009

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**Prologue: The Legacy of the Women**

* * *

Isis was an intelligent child. It was obvious from an early age, though her father rarely acknowledged it. In his eyes she would always be a girl first – a soft and vulnerable female body, a dowry and a demand on his resources – before he acknowledged the personality that went with that. He had little respect for his daughter.

"What did I do," he asked more than once, "that Allah cursed me with such bad luck in a firstborn child?"

He never acknowledged that Isis wasn't his firstborn. He had even less respect for Rishid, and never used any words that revealed they were actually family. Rishid was reduced to a series of epithets – 'you there', 'useless creature', and 'foundling'. Half the time he was treated more like an indentured servant than an adoptive son.

"You should thank me," their father said on those few occasions he did recognise Rishid. "I have given you everything you have. Your life is due to me and my generosity."

"Yes, sir," Rishid replied quietly.

Other times, if Rishid had done something wrong, their father would look at him as though he was a pile of goat mess, and say, "The world outside is a terrible place. I should put you out in it. It would be no more than you deserve. You're a filthy thing. Unclean. Cursed. Not even your own flesh and blood wanted you. They left you to die in the sand. They could see from the moment you were born that you aren't worth a camel fart. If you're not careful, foundling, I'll send you back where you came from. They cut the hands off useless creatures there. They string them up so nobody else will make the same mistakes as them. Never forget that the only thing standing between you and that place is me."

Malik, though; Malik was both blood and a boy. He was their father's favourite from the moment he arrived in the world, gory and squalling. Their father lifted Malik in his arms and declared him the most precious thing in it, his face shining with pride even as his wife lay dying.

"Has there ever been a more perfect boy than this? He will be strong. He will have the spirit of our family and carry it proudly through his long life."

Isis and Rishid could only ever be half of what their father wanted. It didn't take a new baby brother to make them see that. Nonetheless, the day Malik was born they crouched in the corridor, two tiny lumps of grief, Rishid's arm around her shoulders as she refused to cry. He was a silent, comforting presence next to her, already showing the steadiness that would carry him into adulthood without turning him bitter.

They dealt with their father's daily rejection in different ways. Rishid kept to himself and blended into the shadows, making himself essential but invisible to their daily life. Isis buried herself in books. When she wasn't reading she was thinking about what she'd read, or thinking about how to get hold of more reading material. Her father thought reading was bad for girls.

"What man needs a well-read wife to argue with him?" he asked on her twelfth birthday, throwing one of her books across her room. "You're filling your head with harmful ideas. The only things you may read are the archives of our history as Tomb Keepers and the Qur'an. That is _all_!"

"I hear you, Father," Isis said quietly. Not yes or no, or 'I'll do what you say', just 'I hear you'.

He accepted her response and went back to ignoring her. Isis acceptance his treatment and went back to reading whatever she could. Not everyone in the tunnels agreed with his narrow views, though they didn't challenge him openly. He was the head of the family, after all.

Many people mistook Isis's behaviour for coldness. Those who sneaked books to her recognised it for what it was, but she never misunderstood that if her father found out she'd be on her own against his wrath. Her allies were fair-weather, and she was intelligent enough to know it, alongside many other things she couldn't learn in books.

For instance, she learned how to cope without a mother or a female role-model except what her father fabricated from her mother's ghost.

"Your mother would never be so rude. Your mother would know her place. Your mother had no interest in reading. Your mother would do as I say. Your mother understood what was expected of her. Your mother was a good woman. Why can't you be more like your mother?"

Isis suspected her mother wasn't everything her father said. She'd gone against her husband to take in Rishid, after all, which spoke volumes for her kindness and compassion – two things Isis's father _didn't _talk about when he was holding her up as a model of female virtue. Isis had to get her modernism and thirst for knowledge from somewhere, she reasoned.

Locked away from the sun and forced to entertain herself outside the confines of her father's idea of 'education', she'd developed something of a second skin, which acted as a shield between her and the dusty air breathed only by other Tomb Keepers. Once, when she was small, she'd watched a beetle crawl across her bedclothes and tapped at its shell with the tip of one finger. The beetle hadn't run away, or been hurt. Instead, it had turned towards her and paused, as if wanting to know what she was, secure in the knowledge that she couldn't hurt it. Isis had decided that she, too, would have a shell like the beetle, which would keep her safe from her father's cruelty and allow her to continue learning about the world he wanted to pretend didn't exist.

"And one day," she said to herself, or perhaps to her mother's spirit, "I'll be able to open my shell and fly away on my own set of wings, and he won't be able to do anything about it."

Except that she knew she'd never be able to go without her brothers, and they didn't have beetle-shells with wings hidden under them. Rishid had just the shell. He didn't want to leave here, where he was ignored but safe from the world that had rejected him when he was only a few days old. Malik had the wings but not the protective shell, and Isis worried that someday his gossamer dreams would be shredded by the legacy of the Tomb Keepers. She had to stay, for their sakes.

* * *

Isis looked up from her paperwork to see Malik framed in the doorway. She smiled, as she always did when she saw him. He was so different these days to the hate-filled boy who blew through Battle City, but he wasn't the naïve child he'd been before that, either. Old as it made her feel to say it, at sixteen her little brother had grown up. His experiences had made him both less and more than the man their father had wanted of his heir.

"Hey," he said softly. He tended to say everything softly, which was also different than the old days – no more excited giggling or booming commands, just a polite, slightly anxious tone that veered into contentment when alone with those he cared about. After years of being his enemy, it was gratifying to be counted amongst this old-new category.

"Malik." Isis gestured at the chair on the other side of her desk. "This is unexpected."

"I was, uh, going through a few things." He sat down. "From the tunnels."

Her expression twitched. They'd recently been back to their childhood home, and she'd hated every moment of it. The place crawled with bad memories like a head full of lice. Even though intellectually she knew it was ridiculous, she hadn't felt like she could breathe properly until they were back in open air. Rishid, too, had looked sick, though he'd been more concerned about what the visit might do to Malik.

Thankfully, Malik had been fine. The visit had actually been his idea. "For closure," he'd said when they returned to Egypt from Japan.

"Closure?" Rishid had echoed.

"A concept championed by psychiatrists." Malik had caught Isis's eye and looked away, still too raw inside to meet the understanding there. "Bringing something to a conclusion. It means tying up loose ends, accepting that something is over and … that it can't affect you anymore. Or hurt you, at least."

And so they'd pulled open the long-shut doors and gone into the tunnels, though each one of them would rather have been anywhere but there. They'd explored the rooms where they'd spent their formative years, touched the walls and floors, breathed air that smelled of nothing but dust, and eventually returned to their new lives aboveground when Malik gave the signal.

"It's really over," he'd said. "He's really not there."

Neither Isis nor Rishid had needed to ask who he meant. Rishid had placed a protective hand on Malik's shoulder and Isis had drawn closer on his other side. They'd stood together in front of the open doorway, united in a way that had seemed impossible only weeks earlier. It had been simultaneously painful and the most wonderful thing in the world.

They had brought things out of the tunnels with them – keepsakes and objects safeguarded by Tomb Keepers for centuries. They weren't as sacred or important as the Millennium Items, but were still links to the ancient past that museums would love to own. Isis knew it was probably wrong of her not to have donated them already, but Malik had taken the task of sifting through them, and if it brought him more of this 'closure' she was happy to bend a few rules. Her colleagues would have been shocked, but then again her colleagues scoffed at the idea of ancient Egyptian as more than fairytales.

Malik watched for her reaction to his words. Isis set down her pen, steepled her hands under her chin and said, "Oh?" She kept her voice soft and her tone gentle, as if talking to a skittish animal. It was less to do with coddling Malik than it was to conceal her own emotions.

Malik placed what he'd been carrying on top of her paperwork. It was a wooden box. There was no lock, but it radiated privacy and obviously hadn't been opened for some time. The wood was dark and worn, faint patterns showing like the veins under the dusky skin of her own wrist. Something had been carved into the lid and around the edges, though age had made the shapes indistinct. This box had been touched by many hands.

"It was Mother's," Malik said simply. He pushed the box towards Isis. "It's supposed to be passed from mother to daughter."

"What?"

"'The Legacy of the Women'. I checked; it's not in any of the official Tomb Keeper records, but there was a note. _Is _a note. Inside."

Slowly, Isis removed the lid. There were two levels, rather like a jewellery box. The first level was indented so it could be lifted out. A slightly yellowed envelope lay on top. It was old, but not nearly as old as the box. Isis flicked her eyes briefly to Malik's face, picked up the envelope and slid its contents free. The note was brief but heartfelt. When she'd finished reading there was an uncharacteristic lump in her throat.

"You read this?"

Malik shook his head. "I saw it wasn't for me and stopped. I figured it was important, to be hidden away like this. I don't think Father even knew about it."

"He didn't. 'The Legacy of the Women' isn't anything to do with the Nameless Pharaoh, it's about the history of the tomb-keepers themselves." Isis finally focussed on the items beneath the letter. "Relics of what the first people charged to wait for the Pharaoh's return were like. The men were concerned only with their mission, but the women of the time wanted to preserve their own identities after they were secluded. They couldn't write, but they passed down objects that were precious to them, mother to daughter, and told each other stories. These things … they're _our_ history, Malik."

"I think I like their way better than how they preserved the story of the Nameless Pharaoh." Malik's hand went briefly to his shoulder, rubbing as if he wanted to feel the sigils burned into his back.

But for once Isis wasn't distracted by the ghosts of her brother's pain. She didn't remember her mother properly. The woman was little more than a collection of vague images, like a half-remembered dream that faded a little more with each passing year. Isis's childish mind had retained what it could, but it had never been enough. She'd always wanted more, but had to content herself with what she had. Her mother had come from outside the family and was rarely talked about afterwards, as though the husband she left behind felt ashamed of her and his own decision to marry her. It was one of the only things he'd ever done that made Isis think of him without dislike. However narrow-minded and officious he had become, once upon a time their father had been a young man who fell in love with the wrong woman and defied tradition to be with her.

And yet each word in the letter, penned when Isis had only been a baby, echoed in someone else's voice. Isis could hear it clearly – better than she could hear Malik breathing, her own pulse in her ears, or the sounds of Cairo outside her open window. Her mother had promised to explain everything to her someday, and finished the very personal message with the words: 'When you're old enough to understand, I will teach you about the world, but first and foremost I will teach you about my love for you, my precious firstborn daughter'.

Her mother had loved her. Somehow that lifted a great weight that Isis hadn't even been aware was o her shoulders.

"Sister?"

"She never got the chance to explain what these items all mean," Isis said thickly, covering her mixed up feelings with well-practised composure like always. Malik frowned worriedly at her – a role reversal she found laughable, though she didn't show it. "Although I suspect most of the stories would have been lost or altered through retelling over the years."

She set down the letter and picked up a few pieces of tarnished jewellery that had probably been beautiful when they were first made.

"Chinese Whispers," she muttered.

She was careful with the items, but couldn't help herself from touching them with her bare hands. It made her feel closer to all the Tomb Keeper women who had gone before her. Perhaps amongst them there had been others like herself, who had dreamed of getting out and making new lives for themselves in the outside world – women who hadn't wanted husbands or children, just the chance to be themselves and be accepted.

But unlike them, Isis had actually done it. She was finally free, and she hadn't had to sacrifice her promises to either of her brothers to achieve it. This little box of keepsakes emphasised to her just how many lives had gone into making the miracle of _theirs _possible. It also hammered home the responsibility they had to those who'd died without achieving the same dream. Briefly, she shut her eyes, overcome but not wanting to show it.

Something touched her hand. She looked down. Malik's was over her own. Her hand had clenched into a fist around a pendant made from a chunk of turquoise with a hole bored through one end. Her knuckles were blanched. Conscious of the great archaeological sin she was committing, she loosened her fist, releasing the item, and allowed Malik to take her fingers in his. It was an unprecedented act. Malik usually hated to be touched. His experiences had left him fiercely private.

Isis took a breath. "I'm all right."

Malik didn't seem convinced.

"I am," she said, trying to reassure him. "I was just a little shocked."

"Would you like me to leave you alone?"

"It was traditional for women to keep this from the men in their lives. They were frightened that the items would be cast out as unnecessary to the Sacred Mission."

Malik started to rise, but she held tight to his hand.

"Tradition hasn't always been the healthiest aspect of our lives."

He stared at her for a moment. Then he sat down. Almost at once he jumped back to his feet. "Rishid should be here as well. He's our brother."

_And outdated traditions affected him as much as they ever did us,_ Isis thought as he hurried off.

Rishid was as hesitant as ever about 'intruding'. Malik forced him into the seat he'd vacated a few minutes earlier and perched himself on the edge of Isis's desk. Rishid's hands remained a tangled clasp in his lap, and his eyes constantly flicked around the room, as though Isis's belongings intimidated him. The irony would have made her laugh, if she'd felt like laughing. Physically, Rishid was the most imposing man she'd ever met. His height, broad shoulders and powerful chest made even hardened criminals nervous, but despite that a constant air of anxiety robbed him of the confidence everyone assumed he possessed.

"It's all right," she said impulsively. Rishid raised his eyes, startled. She wasn't usually given to platitudes, especially easily disproved ones. Everything was _not _all right – not even close. Even so, the words seemed to encourage him.

Together, they went through their mother's gifts, sent from across the years and finally, gratefully received by the children who'd wanted so much to know her.

* * *

Isis led the way through the various exhibits. She felt something like a mother goose, although her 'goslings' were mostly taller than her and didn't peep or sink when they tried to paddle away from her side.

She turned and was struck again by the differences in them since the Ceremonial Duel. Even those not directly involved had been subtly altered. There was loss in their eyes now, as well as the burning devotion that had always characterised the way they looked at each other. Yuugi Mutou in particular seemed drawn, although that was probably to be expected.

It had been Malik's idea for them to see the stone tablet before they went home. He really was a fan of this 'closure' thing now, and had insisted that it would do Yuugi and his friends good to look at it now they knew the true story behind it. Isis had tried to convince Seto Kaiba to do likewise, but he'd been predictably scornful.

"It's over," was all he'd thrown over his shoulder as he walked away from her. "That's all I need to know."

Yuugi and the others had been more receptive to the idea, although Isis got the feeling it was partly because they didn't want to disappoint Malik. Strange, she thought, how people who had once been her brother's enemies could be so considerate of his feelings; but then that was what had always made them special. They were extraordinary people, not because of how they'd saved the world, or because they'd defeated the forces of evil, but because they not only genuinely believed in forgiveness and second chances, but practised it as well. Not many would be able to accept a person who'd done what Malik's darker half – not an invading spirit, he kept pointing out, but something that had come from inside _him_ – had done to them, but Yuugi Mutou and his friends had forgiven Malik, and without question. To Isis, that was far more impressive than anything else they'd done.

She watched as Yuugi muttered something under his breath and Anzu drew closer to him, bumping her arm against his. It wasn't as obvious as Jounouchi's punch to Yuugi's other arm, or the way Honda put his hand on Bakura's shoulder, but the meaning was the same: reassurance that they were there for each other. It made Isis want to reach for Rishid and Malik's hands, but she restrained herself. Really, these emotional displays were starting to take over her life.

This was the first time she'd seen the tablet since the loss of the Nameless Pharaoh. Though it had been only a short time, it seemed like so much had happened since then – not least of which was her trip into the tunnels. She was much more at peace than she'd ever been before, having renewed her relationship with her brothers and her dead parents. She'd finally said goodbye to the ghost of her father and made a connection with her mother. She'd even taken to wearing the turquoise necklace from the Legacy of the Women box. It made her feel closer to her mother in a way she couldn't put into words – at least, not without feeling slightly ridiculous. People in her position and office didn't rely on superstition and symbolism. They dealt in facts and things that could be proven. Still, it made her feel better to wear it.

The tablet was just as impressive as ever. Yuugi and his friends stared silently up at it for a long time.

"I guess Pharaoh Seto felt really bad about what happened," Jounouchi said eventually. "This is, like, some giant apology, right? Trying to set the record straight?"

"Something like that," Yuugi murmured, not taking his eyes off the carved faces. "But I think it was more like he was … just trying to remember …" He frowned a little, as if trying to remember something himself.

"Hey now, less of the frowning." Anzu bumped into Yuugi's arm again. She'd been watching him instead of the tablet. "At least this proves Priest Seto really was a good guy."

"Pharaoh."

"What?"

"Pharaoh Seto."

"Oh yeah. I forgot. I guess I just always think of Yami whenever the word 'Pharaoh' comes up." Her face clouded. "Uh, I mean Atem, not Yami. Man, it's weird with all these name switch-arounds. Pharaoh Seto. Pharaoh Atem. Mana. Mahaad. Priest Akhnadin. Nobody even knew about them for thousands of years, and now -" She raised her eyes to the tablet. "- we do. It's like … we have some sort of responsibility to make sure they're never forgotten again."

Isis nodded, following her gaze. It was the same conclusion she'd come to when Malik brought her the Legacy of the Women box.

"Way to load up even more pressure, Anzu," Jounouchi grumbled. "Like we didn't do enough already?"

"Shut up, Jounouchi," Honda admonished.

But Jounouchi didn't shut up. "Anzu? Hey, Anzu?"

Honda nudged him, none too gently. "You just don't know when to quit, do you?"

Jounouchi pulled away from his friend and waved a hand in front of Anzu's face. "Yoo-hoo, Earth to Anzu, come in Anzu."

Finally, Yuugi also tore his gaze away from the tablet. "Anzu, are you okay?"

Isis focussed on the girl. Anzu Mazaki once played host to Malik's soul, though she hadn't been aware of it at the time. Despite that – or maybe because of it – Isis had always felt somewhat protective of her. Isis knew what it was like to care for someone so deeply you'd risk your life and soul for them, and she also knew what it was like to be the only female in a male-dominated group. There were parallels between herself and Anzu Mazaki.

Maybe that was why, when she saw the distressed look on the girl's face, Isis put her hand on Anzu's shoulder. Anzu was a girl defined by her physicality. As she'd proved only moments before, she viewed touch as comfort and drew strength from other people bestowing it.

"Sister!" Malik rushed to her side as she collapsed.

Rishid followed an instant later. "Isis!"

"What is it?" Malik demanded.

Isis shook her head, unable to speak. Her hand went to her chest, and the sudden searing heat that had sent her to her knees. Her skin felt like it was burning, but when she touched the turquoise necklace it was icy cold. She pulled it over her collar-line and breathed a little easier with a layer of cloth between it and her.

"That necklace …" Anzu's voice was trembling. So was the rest of her, as though she was suddenly cold, despite the oppressive heat. "Where did you get that?"

Isis looked up. Anzu's face had drained of all colour. Jounouchi and Honda looked a little sick, too, though they seemed more baffled than afraid.

"You recognise it?" Isis wheezed.

"I … no. But I …" Anzu shook her head and pressed her hands against her temples. "It seems so familiar."

How was that possible? The necklace had been hidden away for thousands of years. It wasn't part of the official history, and hadn't even left the tunnels since it was put down there. Maybe Anzu meant it resembled something similar, Isis thought; but one look at the girl's face told her this as incorrect. Anzu recognised _this_ necklace, and somehow it was reacting to … what? Her presence? That didn't explain why it had chosen this moment instead of when Isis first met up with them, or why Jounouchi and Honda also looked suddenly ill.

Bakura knelt beside Isis. Isis knew this boy had fought the spirit of the Millennium Ring as much as he could, and had suffered more than anyone else at its hands. He was working hard to overcome his trauma and reassure the world that he wasn't the monster who had worn his skin. She felt for him. His future wasn't one she envied. Even so, distracted by the aftermath of pain, she had to force herself not to react to him like he was an enemy. Her face froze and her body tightened. Her flesh felt like it was trying to crawl off her bones.

"Is it magical?" he asked quietly, his voice as unlike the spirit's as a trickle of water is unlike a crashing waterfall. He was naturally pale, so she couldn't tell whether he'd also been affected like the others.

Isis shook her head. "Not that I know of."

"Could I see it more closely?"

Gingerly, she drew the chain over her head and held it out to him. The chain itself didn't burn, but when it bushed past her chin the turquoise stung.

Before Bakura's fingers could close over it, however, there was a tremendous crack, like a clap of thunder, or a bomb going off.

Isis instantly found herself flat on the ground, Malik's weight across her shoulders and Rishid crouched protectively over them both. Everybody else in the gallery was in a similar state, but when nothing further happened they started to get to their feet, chattering nervously.

"Whoa, man …" Honda breathed. He was staring up at the stone tablet.

When Malik and Rishid let her up, Isis stifled a gasp. The protective reinforced glass over the tablet, which had been drilled deep into the wall, had shattered. Moreover, she realised, as Bakura picked thick shards from his hair, it had shattered _outward_.

The turquoise necklace lay on the floor where she'd dropped it. Nobody made any move to pick it up. Isis stared at it, and then back up at the unharmed stone tablet. A sense of foreboding stole over her, as well as the after-effects of fear and shock that had come with the explosion. Adrenaline leeched out of her system, to be replaced by a sense of dread.

"Still say it's not magical?" Jounouchi muttered. "Great. Just what we needed. Yet another freaky necklace."

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

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	2. A Very Good Place to Start

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**A/N****:** This fic isn't dead, and neither am I (yet)! Sorry about the long wait between updates. Life has just been all kinds of crazy lately, as those who read my LiveJournal know. That doesn't mean I've abandoned this project, though. I promise that no matter how much time passes, I _will_ finish this one. Fanfic is what's currently keeping me sane, and this fic tops the list.

One of the main reasons this chapter took so long to come out is that it didn't actually exist when I posted the prologue, but something got itself written later in the fic that demanded this part happen. It'll all become clear in the end. As I've said before of my multi-chapter fics: give it a chance to make sense and it will.

And for the record, the majority of this fic will now take place in Ancient Egypt. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the prologue.

* * *

**1. A Very Good Place to Start**

* * *

_Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts. You have to remember this when you find yourself at the beginning.­_ -- Sandra Bullock

* * *

Panya was nothing special, really. Everybody knew it. She knew it too, and was perfectly comfortable with the fact. Her nature was pleasant, her teeth somewhat even, and her eyes and hair the same pleasing shade of nut brown. If she couldn't compete with beauty of her sisters then so be it. She was content to be the plain daughter, sitting quietly by her mother's side while the other two fretted about what jewellery set off their heavily applied make-up.

"You're awfully dull, Panya," Jamila was constantly telling her. Jamila had glossy hair that she tried to keep in a fashionable cut – although by the time news of what was fashionable reached their village it had already passed out of style in the cities. "You just sit there all day like a lump of clay. Are you waiting for the gods to turn you into something better?"

Panya just shrugged and got on with whatever menial task she was doing.

Neither Jamila nor Nanu ever bothered about household chores unless reminded. Then they complained, and were happy to 'forget' given half a chance. Panya had to pick up their slack while they went off to giggle with their friends, and tried to divine which boys would be their husbands by sticking fruit seeds to their foreheads.

"You shouldn't let them take advantage like that, Panya," her father said.

"They have responsibilities," her mother warned. "It'll do them no good if you're constantly covering for their laziness."

"But I like being busy."

"You should still go out and socialise more."

She shrugged. It was her favourite response. "I'm happy as I am."

Panya went about her business quietly and competently. She preferred a life where everything stayed the same and pleasure could be found in doing simple tasks well. Jamila and Nanu wished they could live in the palace as wives of the Pharaoh. They dreamed about expensive clothes and gifts from suitors far above their station. Nanu in particular loved to talk about the fine foods nobles enjoyed, and would often greet meals with a wrinkled nose because they were so simple.

"Be happy with what you have," their father told her. "Be more like Panya. She never complains."

Nanu rolled her eyes and glared at her, even though Panya still had the embroidery for her sister's new slip balanced on her knee while they ate. "If I was more like Panya I'd be as plain as the food."

"As plain as mud," Jamila giggled, until their mother scolded them both.

"You should stand up for yourself," she told Panya when both Jamila and Nanu had gone with very bad grace to fetch water from the well. She was a mild woman most of the time, but sometimes having three daughters tried her patience. "You never defend yourself, Panya. You just let people walk all over you."

Panya shrugged and went back to her embroidery. "I'm happy as I am."

In contrast to her sisters, Panya liked living in their little village. It was quiet, and they were close enough to the river that she could go down as often as she liked and work in the sunshine. She liked working. Moreover, she liked feeling useful. She was rather serious, which made her extra unpopular with her sisters, whose playfulness filled up their personalities like bread soaking up water. She'd never really done anything just for fun if there were other tasks to do – and with Jamila and Nanu around there were _always_ other tasks that needed to be done.

She didn't seek out potential husbands. Men tended to forget all about her, the way you forget about a bench or a tool unless you need to use it. Panya faded so much into the background that any boys who did call for her sisters rarely registered there was a third daughter in the household.

It was an especially hot day when her life changed. Absorbed in mending one of Jamila's linen dresses, Panya didn't notice the boy lurking in the reeds. It wasn't until he let out a groan that she realised she wasn't alone on the riverbank. Automatically her hand went to the little knife she kept for cutting fabric. Unlike many villages, women didn't habitually carry weapons here. It was too quiet. Some of the more frustrated men longed for an excuse to go into battle, especially when they heard stories of wars the Pharaoh's army fought in other parts of Egypt. Sometimes their dissatisfaction worried Panya, but she didn't like to think too much about it.

The boy was no threat. He'd been badly wounded. When she pulled aside the reeds she could see the jagged slash along his thigh, and the dirt encrusted along the edge of the wound. His face was sweaty and drawn with pain and fear.

Her first response was the call her father, but the boy grabbed her wrist.

"Please don't," he begged. "They'll kill me."

"Who will?"

"The men of your village."

"Why would they do that?"

"They'll think I'm a spy."

"A spy?" Panya said incredulously. "Sent by whom? And to spy on what? We're such a small village we don't even have our own judge. We have to share on with three other settlements, and even then most decisions are made by the villagers themselves. For the most part people don't even know we exist. There's nothing worth spying on here. Nothing ever _happens_ here."

But he was insistent; terrified that if he was discovered by anyone else he'd be killed.

"I'm not meant to be here," he burbled, speaking more freely than he should have. "I was separated from my tribe. I've been trying to catch up with them. We're supposed to all be travelling together, but I help look after the goats. A few broke free and I volunteered to round them up, but I went too far to be heard. Raiders found me. They killed the goats. Wanted the meat, I suppose. Would've killed me, too, but I got away." Perhaps it was the pain, or perhaps he thought that he could trade for his life with information. Women were notorious gossips, weren't they? If he had met any other woman, then perhaps, but Panya was different.

Still, she froze at the mention of Raiders. "How close were the Raiders?" If they came to the village they'd either pass right by or slaughter everyone. There was never a third option with Raiders.

"It was yesterday. I was walking all night, so far from here. I'm so tired …" The boy's eyes fluttered. "Please don't kill me."

"I won't kill you."

"I don't want to die."

He was so pitiable that Panya's sensible heart twisted. She couldn't understand her own reactions. Even as she went back to the house, snuck out what she needed and could hide under her slip, and used Jamila's dress as bandages after she'd cleaned his wound, she was trying to figure out what she was thinking.

She knew this boy was one of the nomads who sometimes travelled by this area – infrequently, but she'd heard about them once or twice. Raiders often followed the bigger tribes, like jackals tracking herds of grazing animals because they were easier prey than more cunning wild beasts. She'd also heard about what Raiders did if they caught up with them. Consequently, nomads were seen as magnets of bad luck, not to mention beneath the status of regular Egyptians. 'Godless', her father called them, and 'sinful'. They were fine to trade with, but you always had to remember they were different, in the way crows were different than songbirds, or dust different than the nutrient-rich silt the Nile left in the fields after each flood.

"You can't trust nomads," her uncles always told Panya after they and her father returned from market in the bigger village fifteen miles away. "They'll swindle you as soon as look at you. They don't have the same respect for the law that we do."

"Nomads don't _have_ laws," her father grumbled. "They don't believe in Ma'at. Heathens, all of them. The Pharaoh shouldn't let them wander about the way they do, not with the all the damage of the war."

"I heard," said one fat auntie, "that nomads sell Egypt's secrets to other nations."

"That would certainly explain how they can cross the borders as easily as they do. They're cheats and liars. They'd sell out their own people for money."

"I heard they kidnap women and sell them into slavery in the border nations."

"I thought that was Raiders?"

"Raiders, nomads – it's all much of a much. I don't want any of them near _me_, and I can't think of anyone who would."

Calling someone 'nomad' was an insult, to be hurled in an argument when you were really angry. Panya had grown up being told that nomads never washed, stole, pillaged, and were basically just a step up from bloodthirsty Raiders. She'd sometimes wondered whether these things could possibly be true, since the men who went to market sometimes brought back dazzling bits of tribal jewellery. Surely nobody who could use their hands for something so beautiful could be as evil as people said. But she was just one girl. Her opinions didn't count for much.

This boy was none of the things she'd be told. Despite wandering in the wilderness, he'd taken the time to wash himself, he wasn't daubed in the sigils of human sacrifice, and he had been so very frightened before he passed out. He wasn't a figure from a nightmare; he was just a lost and injured boy, like any boy from the village. The only difference she could see was extra scrawniness and an accent when he talked.

Her practically nature emerged in the way she treated his wound. When he woke up she fed him, and then made him drink a concoction of herbs her mother had taught her would dull pain and speed healing. She changed his bandages, making sure the new ones were scented with oils to keep away disease that might try to infect the wound. It was a miracle it wasn't infected already, she told him. She wasn't a doctor, so if it had been she probably couldn't have done anything to stop it spreading.

He was amazed she was helping him, and even more amazed she hadn't told anyone about him.

"You asked me not to."

"Yes, but … I didn't actually expect you to listen."

"Why not?"

He blinked at her. "Because you're Egyptian."

Panya bristled slightly.

"That's not what I … I just meant that I'm _not_. I'm a nomad. Surely you've figured that out by now."

"Of course I did. I'm not stupid. But what difference does that make?"

He stared at her, nonplussed. Then he closed his mouth and his frown eased. "None at all. I suppose."

Inwardly, the answer wasn't so easy to explain. Panya found her stomach hurt when she thought about the boy laying the reeds, missing his family, wondering if he was going to die. She felt sorry for him, but it was more than that. She wondered whether his tribe would come looking for him. Would they approach the village? What would happen if they did? _That_ thought sent her cold. She liked a simple life, but suddenly hers was anything but.

She told Jamila the dress had been too badly damaged to repair and completely failed to mention what she'd actually used it for. Nobody ever suspected she was keeping secrets. Panya wasn't that type of girl. She disliked the idea of stealing from her family, so she just ate less and took the rest to the boy.

He stayed by the river, nestled in a cove formed by the roots of a tree where the bank had worn away. Hippos and crocodiles avoided the area, and villagers preferred the more solid ground upstream. Each day he would hide until Panya appeared, sometimes carrying washing or mending, sometimes with nothing in her hands but with a message she was supposed to be taking to someone else in the village, which had given her the excuse to go out.

"You're being very generous. What do you want from me in return?"

She frowned when he asked this. "Nothing."

"But then why are you helping me?"

"Because you need help. If people didn't help each other the world would be in a sorry state."

"This goes beyond just showing me kindness. You're going out of your way to take care of me. I don't want you getting into trouble because of me." He stared at the fruit she'd brought him, turning it over in his hands. He had wide hands, darker than her own, and rough with the calluses of holding weapons and working with the goats.

He told her lots of things about tribal life. He explained about the Great Spirits, about how they camped and decamped, how they hunted and traded, how they survived and lived alongside Egyptians while being so different.

_But they're not so different after all_, Panya thought as she listened to him. _They still have families. They still have loyalty. They still have everything we Egyptians have. They're still just __**people**__. _She never felt anything but safe in his company. She never felt that he was lying to her, either. She didn't know how. Maybe it was his eyes – blue as a cloudless sky and so filled with honesty that trusting him came as naturally as breathing.

He'd been training as a warrior, he told her, when his tribe moved camp. Every young nomad man, no matter what other tasks he'd done since childhood, trained to take the Warrior Test. He was due to take his soon.

"Or I would have been. I wonder if I'll ever see my people again," he'd said when he first told her about this.

"You will." Panya didn't have the right personality to add 'if you wish for it hard enough' or anything like that. She was the type of girl who believed in cleanliness, always checking your bed for scorpions _before_ you lay down, and choosing thread that wouldn't show when you mended your good clothes. She did pat his shoulder, though.

Now he just stared at the fruit, and she didn't pat his shoulder because she'd suddenly noticed how well-defined they were, and it had caused a strange fluttery sensation in her gut.

"You've come to mean a great deal to me, Panya."

Enough, it seemed, that when he was able to walk again he told her he was going to leave.

"It's too dangerous for me to stay. It's a wonder I haven't been discovered up to now – you too. I don't want to push my luck any further. Believe me, it's better if I go."

Panya stared at him, that strange fluttering inside her again. "But I don't want you to go."

He did go, though, taking with him the pack of food she'd finally decided to steal for him, and the few bits of jewellery she owned, so he could trade his way back to his tribe – all of which was flung on the ground as evidence of his guilt when they dragged him back into the village that night.

"We found him skulking around, obviously up to no good," said the men who'd discovered him. "Filthy nomad." They said the word as one might say 'cat dirt' or 'camel dung'.

Panya was hustled away with the rest of the women who tried to see what was causing such a stir. She surprised her mother by fighting her way back to the jeering circle. Her behaviour was so uncharacteristic that she was able to slip past a lot of bodies before someone took her arm and yanked her back.

He was on the ground, covered in cuts and bruises. One arm was bent at an odd angle. He caught her eye and gave a slight shake of his head. They thought he'd only just arrived in the area. They didn't know how she'd been caring for him, and judging by the way everyone was reacting now, if that came out it would go badly for her.

Panya looked around at the men and women of her village. She'd grown up with these people. She'd listened to their stories, learned what they had to teach her, and looked up to them for as long as she could remember. Yet at the moment she barely recognised them. Their prejudice had made them strangers. It had made them terrifying. Their fear of Raiders, their intolerance of non-Egyptians, and their frustration at their quiet, simple lives had turned them into a mob. The law that they believed made them better than others was suddenly a knarled and twisted thing, like a club made from heavy wood.

His body was flung into the river for the animals to eat. As a godless nomad he wasn't granted any kind of burial ritual. Nobody ever spoke of the incident again, except to say how brave the men had been, protecting their women from such a dangerous thieving outsider.

Panya stayed silent. She'd screamed once, but that was into her fist, as she was hustled away and heard the sickening crack of rock meeting bone. She never commented on what had happened. In fact she almost stopped talking altogether. She went on with her work, never straying from her daily routine, but her face seemed to have forgotten how to smile, and her heart felt heavy as the fabled sky-iron that was used in only the most sacred temples.

Eventually her parents grew concerned over her moroseness and lack of appetite. Even Jamila and Nanu noticed.

"Are you ill?"

"Should we ask to borrow a donkey and take you to the doctor in the next village?"

Panya shook her head. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"You look sick."

"Are you sick?"

"No," Panya replied.

She was, but it was heartsickness and no medicine could cure that. The previous night she'd had a nightmare so vivid it actually made her vomit when she woke up. She couldn't forget the sight of his face as she'd last seen it, compared to what he'd looked like as he told her about his mother and father, the Great Spirits, and the things he'd be able to do once he passed the Warrior Test.

Panya squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm fine. Honestly. Don't worry about me."

When she discovered she was with child she knew what she had to do. She couldn't write well enough to leave a letter explaining properly, and they had no papyrus in their house anyway. She scratched a brief note in the dirt outside the front door, knowing it would be seen when her family rose in the morning.

_His name was Kafele. He was not evil. I loved him very much. I am safe. Do not worry about me. _

The city of Akhenamkhat, named for Pharaoh Akhenamkhanen, was an easy place to lose yourself in. it was a working city, forever expanding and building new districts for people to fill. Panya was absorbed as an Egyptian citizen, became a seamstress and joined a group of women in the fabric district. In seemingly no time at all her quick hands and light touch put her in high demand. Even when her belly started to swell, she just balanced her work on it and carried on without complaint.

She told people she was a widow, and that she'd been travelling with her husband to register the marriage when they were attacked by Raiders. The papers were lost along with her husband. She'd carried on because she had nowhere else to go except the place where they'd planned to start their new life.

"Village life was so small," she only half-lied. "We planned to do so much together, but the village and the people there was so small-minded we couldn't stay. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do without him …"

"Such a sad story," said the head seamstress, a woman with enough independent means that she'd never bothered with a husband for herself. "But don't worry, darling. We'll take care of you. We look out for our own, here."

And they did. When her son was born the other seamstresses treated him like additional mothers. He had a happy infancy, and an even happier childhood. Someone was always on hand to look after him, and he never wanted for attention, but with so many strong-minded women around the arrogance this might have brought was quelled early on.

He had his mother's hair colour and complexion, but his father's blue eyes. As he grew, Panya saw echoes of Kafele in the way their son's easy charm and fierce desire to protect his loved ones.

"Our own little Guard," the head seamstress said, clapping her hands with glee when he marched up and down the workshop on chubby legs, safeguarding them all with a stick and a pot someone had given him to use for a shield. "Oh, he's so adorable!"

Panya watched her son – Kafele's boy – and pride spiked within her. "He's perfect," she said, and vowed that nobody would ever convince her otherwise, or try to convince him either. She didn't tell anyone his father was a nomad, but in her heart she knew all the ideas about tribespeople were nothing more than lies, suspicion and Egyptian arrogance. Her son was half nomad, which apparently made him half filth, but he _was_ perfect, and she would never let him believe differently as long as she lived.

* * *

His father was a City Guard. He grew up measuring himself against the shaft of a spear, waiting for the day it wasn't too big for him to throw. He always knew he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps. Since the moment he could stand up and mimic the man's walk, he idolised him and wanted to be just like him. His mother thought it tiresome, but his father was flattered. He laughed at his son's mimicry and pulled him onto his lap for the same old routine they never got tired of.

"So what do you want to do with your life, my boy?"

"Spend it protecting people, like you."

"You mean you'd step in front of a thief and stop him even if you didn't know whether he was armed?"

"Yes."

"You mean you'd run into a burning building to save people?"

"Yes."

"You mean you'd work at night and sleep in the day, or go for days without any sleep at all if your superior told you to?"

"Yes."

"You'd follow orders no matter what?"

"No."

"No?"

"Only if they were just and given in order to protect ordinary people and safeguard the law. That's what being a City Guard is all about. The Guard protects Ma'at in the city."

"Good answer. I suppose you can stay my son for a while longer."

He played Guards and Robbers with his brother and sister – both younger than him but pretty good playmates nonetheless. His sister's blonde curls bounced as she ran, shrieking, from the 'robber', and she swooned with practised ease when he appeared as the Noble City Guard and Took Care of the Problem. The Guard always won, of course. They all agreed about that. Any other outcome was unthinkable.

So was the news that their father had died in the line of duty. Unthinkable. He'd known being a Guard was dangerous, but he'd never considered it would actually take his father from them. The family was devastated, and fell into a sort of stupor afterwards. They didn't begrudge their father his place in Paradise, but the sudden absence gaped like an open wound in their lives.

Maybe that was why he strode into the middle of the crowd of bullies when, by rights, he had no business getting involved. He wasn't from their circle. He wasn't even from their area of the city. He was just walking along the street, head in the hazy place it had been since his father died, when he heard the sound of a fight from down an alley. When he drew closer he could see it wasn't much of one – four against one, with handfuls of sand being flung around like children in a nursery. A foot connected with the one's belly, making him double over, and the four moved in like jackals ripping a lone goat to pieces.

Something snapped inside him. He didn't know the details of what was going on but he knew injustice when he saw it. The four boys weren't so brave when he waded in. He was big for his age, and powerful across his shoulders. He took after his father that way. He had also learned how to block and throw a good punch from an early age.

He knew how to block a bad punch too, which was all _they_ threw. Typical mob behaviour: only brave when they were many and the enemy was weak enough. He made short work of them and then turned to their victim – who flung sand into his eyes and tried to run away.

He punched blind. His fist still managed to connect with the smaller boy. He heard the 'whoof' and 'thump' of a body hitting the floor. It didn't get up again.

"Why did you do that?" he asked.

"Why did _you_ do that?" the boy demanded breathlessly. "I was fine on my own."

"No you weren't."

"I didn't need any help. I didn't need _your_ help."

"No, you didn't _want_ my help," he corrected calmly. His father had always said getting angry with people was counterproductive. The worst thing you could do to an angry suspect was tell them to calm down, but if you led by example, and refused to react to their anger, they couldn't help but do the same. People were more likely to meet you halfway if they believed they'd thought of it themselves. "You did need it, though. They would've killed you."

"Murder's against the law."

"It was a figure of speech."

"I _know_." The other boy sounded rankled, his anger cooling but not disappearing as the heat of battle left him. After a moment he asked, "If I get up, will you hit me again?"

"Will you try to blind me with sand again?"

"No."

"They I won't hit you."

A few seconds later the other boy got to his feet. Gritty tears couldn't mask his sour expression, or the blood caking his lip and left nostril. He spat red saliva onto the floor and rubbed his mouth with his wrist. He was shorter than average, with a shock of brown hair that looked like they'd been messy even before he got in the fight. He didn't wear it in the fashionable single forelock, with the rest of his head shaved. Maybe that was why he'd been picked on. Something about him exuded 'prey', even though the blood on his knuckles and mixed with sand under his fingernails said otherwise. This boy fought dirty.

"Why were you fighting with them?"

"Because they exist. Isn't that enough?"

"Disturbing the peace is an offence."

"What are you, a City Guard?" he snorted the words, but choked on the noise at the reply.

"Someday, yes."

The pause lasted several seconds. "Seriously?"

"Why do you sound surprised?"

"I don't know. I just … how old are you?"

"Nine."

"I'm nine, but I don't know what I want to do with my life yet." His expression darkened. "Except live it without having to defend myself just because I'm alive."

"What are you talking about?"

A bitter laugh – far too old for a nine year old. "You mean you can't tell just by looking at me? I would've thought I had it written on my forehead and hieroglyphs, from the way those four keep coming after me." He tilted his chin, as if inviting someone to take a shot at it. "I'm a _nakmah_."

"… Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"You don't know what a _nakmah_ is?"

"Should I?"

Another chin tilt. Clearly, the smaller boy was anticipating more hostility, which just made him wonder why the boy had brought up the term at all, if he expected it to turn people against him. "My father was a nomad."

A pause. "And?"

That seemed to flummox the other boy. "You know. A _nomad_."

"I've heard of them."

"They're filth."

"You think so?"

"No!"

"Then why say it?"

"Because … because that's what everyone says!"

"I don't."

"Well you're a weirdo. A weirdo who gets involved in other people's business when he's not wanted, or needed, or … or … you're just a big_ klimkakh_!" The smaller boy's eyes glittered like he'd just said something unforgivable. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you going to punish me for calling you that?"

"I don't even know what you just said."

The other boy deflated again. He scratched his head. "You don't react like a normal person to anything, do you?"

"I react like myself. My father taught me that to do anything else is dishonest."

"And you always do what your _father_ says?" the other boy sneered.

"Said."

"What?"

"Said. Not says. My father is dead."

The other boy's eyes widened. He stood straighter. "I … I didn't …" He shifted his weight from bare foot to bare foot. His soles were thickly callused. Clearly his family didn't have wealth enough for sandals. "Mine too."

Something inside him keened softly at the bitterness in the boy's voice. He folded his arms and looked down at the same-age, same-city child who was still so different, so alien in looks and thoughts.

"My father was a City Guard. He died during a house fire. He saved three lives but lost his own."

"I … never actually met my father. He died before I was born. Because he was a nomad. He was … killed. Because of that. Because he was different. Like he didn't matter. And because of that, because of _him_, I'm called a _nakmah_. A half-breed. Half-human, almost. My mother's sisters … she moved away, but they got married and came to the city. They found her by accident when they wanted pregnancy dresses to reflect their husbands' high stations. They promised they wouldn't tell, but they must've, or maybe one of the other seamstresses overheard … but people found out, and so I'm a _nakmah_. Which means I'm fair game." The smaller boy nodded his head in the direction the four bullies had taken. "I've never told anyone all that," he said, sounding surprised. "Why am I telling you? I don't even know you."

"And I don't know you. But I know how you can stop believing them."

"What?"

"You believe them."

"About what? About being a _nakmah_? About being _worthless_ just because of who my father was?" His bloodied hands tightened into fists.

"Are you telling me you don't?"

"I'm worth as much as anybody else in Akhenamkhat! As much as anybody else in all of Egypt!"

"But you still introduced yourself as a _nakmah_ just now, before you even told me your name."

The fire in his eyes blazed like the blue centre of a flame. Then it faded. The boy seemed to collapse in on himself, his cuts, bruises, and the kicks he'd taken all working to make him tired and seem even smaller as his shoulders slumped. It had to be hard, living with the constant knowledge that people thought you were less than them.

He tried to put himself in the boy's place, but couldn't. He'd known his father. He was valued by all members of his family. His little brother and sister adored him. This boy, whether or not he had family waiting for him at home, looked as lonely as a single stem on a bank of flattered reeds.

"I'm not worthless," the boy muttered. "I'm _not_."

"So prove it."

"How?"

"Become a Guard like me. Guards prove themselves over and over, day after day and night after night. They use deeds, not words. You can't argue with deeds. It doesn't matter what your background is; if you're a Guard, people respect you. They have to, because half the time they couldn't do what Guards do, and they feel ashamed of themselves because they know it. Guards protect the law. They're champions of Ma'at. _Nobody_ can disrespect a City Guard and still call themselves a true Egyptian."

The boy stared at him. "You think it's just that easy?"

"No. Nothing's easy. But it's true."

"You sound like a recruitment officer."

He shrugged.

The boy bit his lip. "I could really be a City Guard? They'd let me?"

"If they didn't, they'd answer to me."

The boy snorted. "As if that's any kind of threat."

"Believe me," he said seriously, "it would be. Nobody messes with my friends."

* * *

Panya watched her son and the boy-who-wasn't-her-son-but-might-as-well-be. She'd come to mentally tag him that way, and it fit more and more with each passing day. Last week, when he looked troubled, she had stroked her hands through his single hank of hair the way she did with her son's – he had convinced her son to wear his that way too, to look more the part for the recruiters. He hadn't even flinched. It had felt perfectly natural on both sides.

The boys were inseparable, though they'd each chew off their arms before being openly affectionate. Mostly you could tell their closeness from the way they stood; each trying to edge slightly in front of the other, as if to protect him. Since her son was so much smaller than his friend this was often funny to look at – like a fox trying to protect a lion.

Actually, that wasn't such a bad comparison. Her son was wiry and light on his feet, and since he didn't have much bulk he relied on speed and cunning in a fight, whereas his friend dwarfed almost everyone he met. If that boy took a swing at someone, they went down and stayed down. Sometimes they were unconscious but sometimes they stayed because it was dangerous to get up again if he was still around.

Yet at this moment, despite his size, he looked so _small_. Loss had a way of making you seem tiny.

"Boating accident," the neighbours tutted at each other. "The Nile claims so many."

"So tragic. He already lost his father, and now this."

"Mother, brother and sister, all drowned."

"They say a hippo sank them."

"I heard it was negligence for safety procedures. The skiff sprang a leak."

"No, it was definitely hippos. And it wasn't a skiff, it was a barge."

"Hippo_s_? You mean there was more than one?"

"Two fighting bulls. Ploughed right into the boat. Nobody on board stood a chance. Even if they hadn't drowned, they'd have been crushed or maimed. Everyone knows the most dangerous animal in the world is an angry bull hippo."

"How awful."

"Was he there? Did he see it?"

"He was flung clear – right out of the boat. Knocked unconscious. Washed up on shore unscathed after everything was over. Everyone says it's a miracle. He was the only survivor, you know."

"What'll he do now?"

"Has he any relatives who could take him in?"

"Not if he wants to stay in Akhenamkhat."

"So he'll be sent away, then."

"Such a shame."

"Can't be helped."

Panya tried not to listen or think too much about her neighbours' gossip. They were like midge buzzings. However, like midges, you couldn't just wave them away and expect them to go. The places where they'd bitten into her memory swelled up, making her thoughts hot and itchy. She didn't know what her son's friend would do now, either, and that worried her. To look at him, you could've mistaken him for someone with no passion, but she knew his emotions ran deep and motivated him in everything he did. His life path had been chosen by his love for his father, after all. This new tragedy could break him, if he let it.

If _they _let it break him.

"I couldn't protect them," he kept murmuring. "I'm the man of the family. It's supposed to be my job to look after them. And I couldn't. I failed. I failed my family …" He looked as shell-shocked now as he had when rescuers first pulled him out of the water and told him what had happened.

Panya understood loss. She knew how corrosive it could be unless you found a way to channel the emotions into something more practical. She couldn't conceive of another way to deal with that kind of pain. Just sitting around and moping had never been the way she did things, and the past years spent around her had rubbed off on both boys as they grew. They weren't really boys anymore, she thought; they were young men.

Except when they were hurting like this. They'd always be her boys then – both of them. Blood wasn't everything, after all.

"You'll live with us," she said.

"I have to go to family -"

"Exactly."

He looked up at her, still dazed, but also grateful. Everything he'd ever planned to do was here in Akhenamkhat. His relatives would let him stay if he asked them.

Her boys stayed together from that day onwards. They lived with her, and she cared for them even as her eyesight failed from work, and her hands became knarled, and her back bowed from long hours at it. Despite all this, she still went to the door the day each day to watch them down the street – including the day they attended the tryouts for the City Guard recruitment officers. She strained her eyes to see them right to the corner, and was left with a headache as she worried whether or not they'd pass muster.

She hobbled to the door on the day they left, and watched them down the street as they took their meagre belongings and followed the officer who had come to take them to the training barracks.

"I won't fail again," Rafael swore in the low monotone he'd adopted since the river accident. What little emotion he showed seemed to have drained out of him into the water that day, except when it came to one thing. "I'll never fail in protecting people ever again."

Panya worried about his determination. He was so blinkered, and being a Guard could be a dangerous job …

"Don't worry, Mother," her son said, hugging her briefly and whispering into her ear. "I'll watch out for him."

"Watch out for yourself as well," she murmured back. "Stay safe, both of you."

"I'll make you proud." His eyes shone. "My father, too."

Panya's heart smacked against her ribcage. In a few months it would do this so hard it would stop itself, and she'd die in the middle of the workshop, her head pillowed on the head seamstress's lap. For now, though, it just beat faster with pride. He may be rough around the edges, too quick with his fists and _still_ prone to getting into fights he couldn't handle if he was insulted, but her son remained the best thing she'd ever done with her life.

"You already have, Valon."

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

* * *

_A Very Good Place to Start_

-- The chapter title comes from the song _Doh-Ray-Mi,_ from _The Sound of Music_ – to wit: 'Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start'.

_Panya was nothing special, really. _

-- Panya is an Egyptian name that means 'mouse'.

_Jamila had glossy hair that she tried to keep in a fashionable cut – although by the time news of what was fashionable reached their village it had already passed out of style in the cities._

-- Jamila is a Swahili name that means 'beautiful'.

_Nanu in particular loved to talk about the fine foods nobles enjoyed, and would often greet meals with a wrinkled nose because they were so simple. _

-- Nanu is an Egyptian name that means 'beautiful'.

"_They don't believe in Ma'at. Heathens, all of them. The Pharaoh shouldn't let them wander about the way they do, not with the all the damage of the war."_

-- Ma'at was a goddess, but several historians say she's actually more of a concept than an actual deity. Ma'at was the personification of the fundamental order of the universe, without which all of creation would perish. The primary duty of the pharaoh was to uphold this order by maintaining the law and administering justice. To reflect this, many pharaohs took the title "Beloved of Ma'at," emphasising their focus on justice and truth. At any event in which something would be judged, Ma'at was said to be present, and her name would be invoked so that the judge involved would rule correctly and impartially. In the underworld, the heart of the deceased was weighed by Anubis against Ma'at's feather. If the heart was heavy with wicked deeds, it would outweigh the feather, and the soul would be fed to Ammit (a demon with the head of crocodile, the torso of a leopard and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus), but if the scales were balanced, indicating that the deceased was a just and honourable person in life, he would be welcomed by Osiris, the Lord of the Dead, into Paradise. Ma'at's presence in all worlds was universal, and all the gods deferred to her. Ma'at was worshipped and revered widely throughout all of Egypt. Even the gods are shown praising Ma'at. For more information about the idea of Ma'at follow this link -- touregypt. net/godsofegypt/maat2. htm

_His name was Kafele. He was not evil. I loved him very much. I am safe. Do not worry about me. _

-- Kafele is an African name that means 'worth giving one's life for'.

* * *


	3. Teetering on the Edge of the Future

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* * *

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3. Teetering on the Edge of the Future

* * *

Téana found her at the edge of the fire's glow, where the shadows from the desert tugged and tussled with the light. She had a strange look in her eyes. Her stance reminded Téana of wild animals you sometimes saw in predawn hours, eyes glittering in the darkness beyond the camp. Having used the nearness of humans as refuge during the night, they always broke and left with the sunrise.

She cleared her throat to signal her presence, but the girl didn't turn around. When Téana spoke, her voice sounded scratchy and young. "You're leaving," she said. It wasn't a question.

The girl finally turned. She smiled that small, sad smile of hers and tipped her head to one side. If her hair had been sandy brown, like Jono's, she really would have looked like a stray desert jackal. Her eyes even glittered the same way, and when she asked "You are sad?" she sounded like her mouth wasn't meant to make words like a human.

"I …" Téana faltered. She wasn't sad, but she was uneasy. She hadn't slept well these past few nights and spent daylight pursued by feelings of disquiet. Her dreams had been filled with a formless, roiling dread, as though something was trying to tell her a terrible thing was about to happen, but not what. The feeling had only grown stronger upon meeting the strange girl with the pale hair. "I'm worried."

"For me?" The pale girl seemed genuinely surprised. "Your elders would scold you."

Téana dipped her eyes. The tribal elders _would_ reproach her for being concerned about an outsider. In a life as tough and brutal as it was short, kindness was in short supply. Outsiders didn't even come at the bottom of the heap.

She still didn't know what had possessed her to feed and water the willowy girl who had blown in on the evening breeze. She was both a stranger and strange, her colouring unlike anything Téana had ever seen before. Her people were swarthy; their skin leathery from days exposed to the elements and nights huddled around fires for warmth. Their lives were difficult and so were they, though they marked the spirits and carried their histories with them as they travelled, caring for the old stories like babies.

This outsider was also rootless, but she was alone and had no tribe. She had mentioned something called the 'Faraway Big Water' when Téana brought a canteen. That wasn't its proper name, but the word 'ocean' had no meaning to her. When the outsider tried to describe a stretch of water as big as the desert, Téana wrote her off as sunsick. Not even the Nile was that big.

The pale girl came towards her. Despite herself, Téana took a step back. She stopped when the other girl held out a hand. It took a moment to realise she was meant to put her own into it. Still she hesitated. She had proved she was weaker than the rest of her tribe, more sentimental and stupid, but trust was still a precious commodity.

"You are frightened." The outsider sounded disappointed, but not shocked. "You are frightened of me."

Téana glanced back, over the fire. The swarm of tents were quiet, but a guard might happen by at any moment. Jono, especially, was overzealous about proving his warrior skills. Seren, his frail sister, had been especially ill lately. Téana could only hope tending to her meant he had swapped tonight's guard duty with someone less eager.

"If anyone sees me …" Téana trailed off. They had driven the stranger away once, kicking sand and throwing curses and goat dung.

"Do not worry. I only wish to give you something." The pale girl waited for her hand. One quick slice from Téana and her own could fall to the sand. She was trusting Téana's own sense of honour by leaving it outstretched.

Téana was suddenly very aware of the dagger at her belt. Many women carried them, sometimes even more than one tucked into their clothes. Men, by comparison, carried their spears and scimitars in full view. For nomads, half of every battle was knowing how to use weapons _not_ to fight.

Eventually Téana gave her hand. However, rather than put an object into her palm, the stranger instead drew her finger down Téana's wrist, along the thin network of veins, then traced a circle that touched the very edges of her palm.

"The ocean," she said softly. She corrected herself at Téana's expression. "The Faraway Big Water sometimes seemed so endless to me. It has no sides, no finish; its beginning changed from beach to beach, cliff to cliff, horizon to horizon. I could stand on the shore and look until my eyes hurt, but I could never hope to see all of it. I tried, as a child. It was like an obsession. It drew me no matter how I tried to fight it. I should not have wandered to the shore so much, but I could not resist, and that was my downfall. The Big Water was not endless. Likewise, this circle may seem to have no end and no beginning, but everything has an ending and a beginning. Some are just easier to see than others." She pressed her hand flat against Téana's own. "You were kind to me. I call on the spirits of the ocean and of my homeland to guide your path straight and true, from your beginning to your someday end."

Téana realised she had been holding her breath. She let it out in one great gust. Energy hung in the air like right after a sandstorm – great power given form; spirits called into the physical world. "Th-thank you," she stuttered. It seemed to be the right thing to say.

"You are welcome." The stranger smiled, but again it was forlorn. "You have eyes like mine."

Téana blushed. Her eyes were an abnormality amongst her people. While her skin and hair matched everyone else's, instead of rich brown her eyes were a deep blue. Combined with her dreams, which sometimes showed her fragmented images of the future, she had been elevated from the daughter of a common goatherd to an apprentice seer. "I –"

The stranger was already huddling under her cloak and turning away. "You were kind to me when nobody else was willing, but I must leave." She tipped her head back briefly. "This land is so hot and dry. Someday I think I may never see my home again. I have been searching so long for the ocean, since I was a child, but every time I get near it, some misfortune drags me away again. At times I think the spirits of this land wish to keep me here forever. Maybe I have done something to offend them and they are punishing me. Or maybe they just find my struggles amusing."

She sounded so sad, so desperate, that Téana blurted without thinking, "The Nile!"

"What?"

"Follow the Nile. I … I asked Otog the Seer about the Faraway Big Water. He said it was like the trunk of a tree, and the Nile is like one of its twigs if you follow it far enough." The idea of the mighty Nile being just a twig was too staggering to think about, but Otog Strange-Eyes was a good mentor. Moreover, he was Téana's friend. He had never steered her wrong before.

Her words brought a smile to the pale girl's face. "I know. As I say, I have tried so hard to reach the ocean before. My route has been clear for many years, only … difficult to make reality." She turned and walked into the lightening desert. Her slender figure seemed soft and terribly vulnerable against the vastness.

Téana wanted to call out; to make her come back. Ridiculously, some part of her wanted to beg the elders to let the girl join their tribe. The camp had so few youngsters, and even fewer females – only herself and Seren, and soon perhaps only herself. Seren was barren and nearly blind. Travelling life was harsh for those who could not keep up or, worse, were useless to the survival of the tribe. Jono thought he could prevent the worst by guarding her as zealously as he did the tents when they made camp, but he was one boy against generations of tradition and ruthless survivalism. Seren didn't even have dreams like Téana. The day she finally lost her sight there would be nothing Jono could do.

This thought made Téana's shoulders slump. If the tribe would cast out a girl-child of their own, whom they had raised since birth, they would never accept someone like the pale stranger. She was too odd, too other. Her eyes saw things even Téana couldn't – perhaps even things Otog would be blind to. The pale stranger just seemed distant all the time, as though waiting for something or someone even she wasn't sure would ever come. She was unnerving, which might be why the tribe sent her away. No man would ever marry her and no woman would accept her as an equal. The only way the elders would consider her useful was if they sold her to one of the bands of slavers whose paths the tribe sometimes crossed.

The line and circle seemed to burn like hot ash on Téana's skin. She clenched her fist. Suddenly she realised she'd never asked the other girl's name. It hadn't seemed important.

The girl was too far away now, especially if Téana intended not to wake the entire camp. Being apprentice to Otog gave her some liberties, but she was still just a girl-child of humble birth. The pale stranger's long legs ate the ground at a tremendous rate, like she was used to running away.

Téana turned away. When she couldn't resist one last glance it was too late: the stranger had already passed out of sight. Téana looked at the tents and wondered why she felt like she wanted to go with her.

* * *

Jono stood at the edge of camp. His arms were folded and his shoulders so stiff his neck had almost completely disappeared. The only things that moved were his hair and the hem of his clothes. His body was totally still.

Maibe approached cautiously. "Jono?" she said, voice softer than a single grain of sand falling onto a dune. Nobody else was awake, but they were far enough from the tents not to be overheard, even if they spoke normally. Still, the situation felt like it demanded whispers. "Jono, talk to me. What's wrong?"

"I went to see Otog."

Otog Strange-Eyes. Of the whole tribe, only he could see the future, so he had been elevated to a lofty position despite being only slightly older than Maibe herself. He also had an apprentice – the equally strange-eyed girl Téana, who had already told Jono what Maibe suspected Otog had now confirmed. Jono sounded so flat and emotionless. That was as unusual for him as his stillness.

"What did he say?"

Jono didn't reply. Maibe followed his gaze out across the desert, to where the dawn had smudged the horizon, turning it the colour of fresh blood and Nile mud.

They sometimes travelled along the banks of the great river, when it wasn't flooded and there were no Egyptians to drive them off. When she was only a few winters old Maibe had seen Jono's father ripped apart by hippos after getting too close to the edge. The shallows had churned like storm clouds, swirling brown silt and reddening water together. She thought about this as she watched the horizon and waited for Jono's reply.

"He said Seren's eyesight will be completely gone by the next full moon." The fist around Jono's spear tightened. "And her left leg will begin to fail soon after. If they let her live that long."

Maibe searched for words that wouldn't sound hollow and ridiculous. She couldn't find any.

Seren was Jono's little sister, though he was more protective of her than any parent. Their mother had died of sunsickness several years ago, so Seren was all the family Jono had left, but she was barren and had never been very strong. The tribe tolerated her because Jono took responsibility for her care and life had been fruitful over the past few years, ever since her health started to fail dramatically. Even so, she was nearing the age when girls would traditionally be married off to provide warriors for a new generation. Since she could make no sons, she was worthless as a mother, and also as a wife. Losing her sight would be the final straw. Jono was needed to protect the tribe and would soon take the Warrior Test. He wouldn't have time to look after her when that happened. Otog had also warned everyone that the time of plenty they'd enjoyed was coming to an end. The tribe could tolerate no burdens if it was to survive any period of scarcity. Seren would be banished to die in the desert as soon as word got out – or killed swiftly and given a simple burial if she was lucky.

"Otog said he tried his hardest to find something in her, but she doesn't have gifts that could save her. She doesn't have any _worth_," Jono said bitterly. He didn't need to add the 'except to me'. Maibe heard it clearly enough. "I … I begged him not to tell the elders." Jono's voice cracked a little. Begging came as easily to him as altruism did to cats.

Maibe touched his arm. He flinched away. The corners of her mouth hardened. Her hands clenched into fists, but she said nothing more. There was nothing _to_ say. Otog was bound by the laws of the tribe too. Even he had to defer to the elders.

"It isn't fair." Maibe was a little surprised to find she had spoken.

Jono snorted. "Téana said the same thing when I came out of Otog's tent. She was outside. I think she was sneaking back into camp. She told me she wished there was something she could do to change fate." He snorted again, and spat in the sand at his feet.

Téana hadn't been the same since the pale, white-haired stranger wandered into their camp several weeks earlier. The elders had sent the girl away, but Maibe knew Téana had tried to convince them to let her stay. They had, of course, refused. They had already received Otog's warning by then and had no sympathy to spare for hungry strangers, especially a foreigner, however pathetic. Since then Téana had been distant and thoughtful in ways she hadn't before. Sometimes she watched her tribesman with a pensive, revolted expression Maibe couldn't even begin to understand. Téana also spent a lot of time at the fringes of camp, or tending Seren, even though there was no need. Téana had her own duties, but Seren's plight had caught her – or maybe her soft heart, made sore when she was unable to help the stranger, had latched onto Seren after a vision of her cruel future.

A sudden strange urgency gripped Maibe. She seized Jono's wrist. He turned at last and stared at her, not just because women weren't supposed to touch men who weren't their husbands, but because of the tightness of her grasp. Neither he nor Maibe were married. Maibe was getting a little long in the tooth compared to other girls, but she was of childbearing age, and Jono promised to be a fine figure of a man once he had finished growing into himself. If he could pass the Warrior Test, any children would be fine additions to the tribe. Maibe shook off those thoughts.

"Let's leave," she hissed.

"What?" Jono blinked at her, nonplussed. "Right now?"

"If we have to. Let's take Seren and leave before the elders decide all our fates for us."

"Leave the tribe?" Jono was flabbergasted. "But –"

"Do you want your sister to die?"

His face darkened. "Of course not."

"Then let's take her and get away from here."

He tried to pull away. "We can't leave the tribe."

"Why not?"

"Because … because we can't! We wouldn't survive half a day alone in the desert. You know that."

"Téana would go with us."

"You don't know that."

"She would. She's as frustrated with life here as we are. She could lead us through the desert safely with her inner eye."

Jono became quiet. "Are you that unhappy, Maibe? I thought you were happy. You always seem happy."

"Appearances can be deceiving."

She had no desire to tell Jono how she longed for something other than motherhood and wifely duties. No woman ever wanted more than those things – what higher accolade could there be, after all, than to care for a man and spawn smaller versions of him?

But Maibe _did_. She wanted _more_, though even she could put no name to what she wanted instead. All she knew in that pre-dawn instant was that she wouldn't find it here.

"I'm leaving," she said. "Will you go with me, and bring Seren?"

Jono hesitated only a moment longer. Love for his sister won out over common sense. "Yes. But we can't go now. We'll be seen. Seren can't get ready that quickly. We'll need supplies, and I think Téana snuck off again, and –"

"Shush." Maibe released him. "Then we'll go tomorrow morning, before the rest of the camp wakes up. Bring enough food for a few days' travel. You're set to guard the stores, right? Just take what we'd eat over that time anyway; no more or less."

"And Téana?"

"Leave her to me." Maibe thought of the apprentice seer's faraway gaze, and the way she always seemed to be looking away from the camp instead of inwards at her own people. Wanderlust was only a hairsbreadth from that kind of expression. "I'll take care of Téana."

Jono looked at Maibe strangely. "Why?"

"What?"

"Why do this?"

"Why not do it?"

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you'll get from me. Sometimes you just do things because they're the right thing to do."

"Thank you," he said at last.

"Don't thank me," Maibe replied. "We might all die yet."

"Better to die protecting what you love than watching others crush it." Jono looked towards Seren's tent, leaving Maibe to study his profile in the encroaching light.

Despite the iron knowledge that she didn't want any of the regular roles reserved for women, something inside her still clenched at the clean line of his nose and the determined set of his jaw. The horrible stillness of before had been replaced by fresh resolve. It suited him much better.

"Yes," she murmured. "Much better."

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**A/N****:** Maibe is a genuine Egyptian name for a girl. It means 'grave'. Jono, on the other hand, is based on the character from the YGO video games. It's a play on the name Jounouchi (sometimes spelled Jonouchi). Seren is based on Shizuka's dub name Serenity, the same way Téana is based on Anzu's dub name Téa.

Reviews very much appreciated, everyone!

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	4. Escape to the Stars

**AN****:** Thank you to everyone who responded last time. I can't believe I screwed up that badly. My face was red, sure enough. Thank you to anyone still reading after the ridiculously slow updates. To say life has been hectic lately would be an even more ridiculous understatement.

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**4. Escape to the Stars**

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_I'm sick and tired of this so-called life,  
Without room to breathe.  
I toss and turn in my bed all night;  
Am I the only one who finds no peace?_

- From **Escape to the Stars **by Cinema Bizarre

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Isis's eyes snapped open. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. She spent a few minutes calming herself down, becoming accustomed to the darkness of her chambers. She realised belatedly that her hands had bunched into such tight fists that her palms were chafed. Every knuckle and joint was blanched. It felt as though her finger-bones might actually snap when she unclenched.

Gingerly she touched her throat. During the day the Millennium Necklace rested there. At night she removed the sacred item, but she could think of no other reason for her disturbing dreams. She woken like this, bathed in sweat and with her head throbbing, only once before. That had been the night the old Pharaoh died. Even though it wasn't around her neck, the Millennium Necklace had cried out to her, as had all the other Items to the priests. The cry had gone up at the very moment the old Pharaoh breathed his last.

Tonight, however, Isis's mind filled with anxiety she couldn't attribute. The fading memory of a warning tasted bitter in the back of her throat, like she had drunk stagnant water or undergone childbearing-sickness. She couldn't understand why she had woken. Was the prince all right? There was no commotion outside, as there had been when his father died. The harder she tried to read the memory, the more confused she became.

Isis had never married or produced children of her own. As a priest of the Pharaoh's court she had dedicated her life to the royal family. Just as his father before him, the new young ruler was her son, her husband, her sovereign, and everything else to her now. She was connected to the position of Pharaoh more than the person assuming the role. Unlike his father, however, she felt a stronger connection to the prince. Rather than think of him as a husband in any sense, she felt more like his guardian, as surely as a mother jackal guarded her cubs. The other priests were guardians and spouses to the crown too, but it burned brightest in Isis.

She knew some would see it as disrespectful for her to think of the new pharaoh as a mortal boy, but Isis could not banish memories of him as a child learning to walk, learning to stand straight-backed as a prince should, and running around acting as a prince should _not_ when nobody was looking. To be the avatar of the gods was a heavy burden, especially for someone so young. Though he had not yet been formally received as king, and a lot of the court still slipped up and called him 'prince', Pharaoh Atem stirred motherly feelings Isis knew others would never understand. Perhaps she would feel different when the formal ceremony affirming his ascent to the throne was over. Somehow she doubted it.

None of which explained why she felt like she had just used the Millennium Necklace when she wasn't even wearing it. She hadn't felt this bad since she first inherited the item from its original keeper. It had taken a long time for Isis to get used to the rush of power working through her. Her head hurt and her eyelids felt dry as they scraped up and down. She sat up, but that only increased the pressure behind her eyes. She pressed the heels of hands against them, as if trying to force them back into her skull, but it didn't help.

What had she Seen? She vaguely recalled shadows circling her on all sides, like a pack of wild dogs around a sheep that had wandered too far from the flock. She remembered throwing herself into the shadows to escape some greater threat looming above. Perhaps she had been running away, she thought. Or perhaps she had been running towards someone, trying to warn them of the danger.

_There was someone else there_, she thought. _Someone … young. The Pharaoh, perhaps? Mahaad's apprentice? _She tried to bring to mind the names of all the youngsters in the court, but none came.

It was no use. Her head hurt too much. The remnants of her dream slipped away like morning mist – first grey, then transparent, then gone. Isis was left with nothing but the sense that it portended bad things. Something was coming that spelled danger for her inexperienced, untested boy-Pharaoh.

The prince was still too busy mourning his father to be fully aware of the tasks that now fell to him as ruler. He celebrated his father's rise into the ranks of the gods, but he missed him too.

_He is avatar to the gods_, she told herself sternly. _He must learn to act like it. He has no time for boyish grief anymore. He has the might of the Millennium Items and the entire court on his side. Whatever problems arise, I'm sure he will be able to face them like a king, not a child_.

Yet she couldn't shake away the image of a little boy learning to walk, smiling and with arms outstretched for his father to catch him.

* * *

"_We have to retrieve them," Elder Sindin says. "They can't be far if they're dragging that cripple with them."_

"_She isn't exactly a cripple -" Elder Pegas point out._

"_Don't pick at details, Pegas. It's not helpful."_

_Elder Pegas shrugs. Every move he makes is impossibly grateful, given his age. Even his voice slips from his mouth like the expensive slippery fabrics Wandering People can never afford. "I merely wanted to mention that despite your constant exaggeration, you can't make the girl what she is not. Their progress won't be as slow as if she really was a cripple. Her legs work, she just can't use them as much as a healthy girl her age. We can't assume she'll slow them down very much at all. One of the others will probably carry her when she's tired. They aren't stupid; they won't stop to rest until they've put considerable distance between us and them. Plus, Jono is leading them. He's a promising young warrior. His trainers all talk about how good he is in the field. He was tipped for big things until his happened. If anyone can keep three women alive in the wilderness, it's Jono."_

"_Otog told you this?" Elder Sindin demands. "Did that bloody seer tell you Jono is actually going to defy us and get away with it?"_

"_We rely too much on that seer." Elder Goza thumps his staff. The colourful feathers and small bones dangling from the top rattle like a gibbet. The bones are not all from animals. Shards of human fingers rattle amongst the threads – enemies he was particularly proud to defeat when he was younger, plus traitors and warriors from rival tribes he has ordered others to execute since he became too old for fighting. "We're becoming soft. How else could we have let something like this happen? Desertion. Trickery. Rebellion from within. Theft from our own stores. __**Women**__ defying __**us**__! It's disgusting."_

"_Would you rather we were blind to everything the future holds?" Elder Pegas asks. He folds his arms, having no staff to bang to make his point. He doesn't need one. Elder Pegas doesn't have Elder Goza's temper. He prefers to use flattery and cajoling to tease truths and promises from people. He can convince others to do what he wants and believe they chose his way themselves. He has sent men to die before, and they were smiling as they went. "Our tribe has been blessed with seers for generations. They're the reason we've survived and remained strong when so many others have fallen to bandits and sickness, or grown weak and become easy pickings for stronger tribes. Would you like us to become like the Black Wing people – all our men killed and all our women made into the wives of outsiders? All our baby sons murdered and our baby daughters raised as if they belong to another tribe, their heritage and pride forgotten?"_

_Elder Goza grinds his teeth. "Of course I don't, you imbecile."_

"_Then don't talk like a fool. Otog may not be all-seeing, but he's a resource we can't do without."_

"_Which brings us back to the crisis at hand," says Elder Sindin. "Jono kidnapped Otog's apprentice."_

_Elder Goza scowls. "I can't understand why Jono and Maibe would go to the trouble of kidnapping Téana. Why? They have to know we'd try to get her back. Why take such a giant risk to save a barren girl so useless even a donkey wouldn't kick her? That kind of stupidity and treason deserves nothing less than death."_

_Elder Sindin shakes his head. "Before we can deal out any punishment we have to find them and bring them back." _

_Elder Pegas strokes his chin thoughtfully. "I'm not sure Téana __**was**__ kidnapped."_

_Elder Sindin's head snaps up. "You think she went with them willingly?"_

"_That I can't say. I understand why Jono would leave, but Maibe? I can only think she followed Jono because she intends to be his wife – or he kidnapped her for the same reason. But there were no signs of struggle, and nobody heard anything out of the ordinary. Nobody even knew they were gone until long after it happened."_

"_If we stay just sitting around on our backsides like piles of camel dung, they'll get clean away!" Elder Goza bangs his staff again for emphasis. _

"_We need the seer girl back," Elder Pegas agrees. "If anything should happen to Otog, we'd be helpless. We need that girl's gifts as insurance against his death. Plus there's always a chance that she could give birth to other seers. It hasn't always worked with male seers, but now we have a female, perhaps things will be different. If she and Otog were to have a child, surely that one would inherit powers off both parents and be an even stronger seer …"_

"_And we need to make an example out of Jono," Elder Goza interrupts. "The whole tribe has been getting too meek lately. They have no fire in their bellies like the old days. They're content to let bigger personalities tell them what to do – not us. They like Jono. He's popular. A public execution for his betrayal would remind them who they should be loyal to."_

_Elder Sindin raises his hand to stop Elder Goza's tirade. "We can deal with that once they've been brought back to us -"_

"_All except Seren," Elder Goza interrupts again. "No need to bring her back."_

"_Maybe not, but Jono, Maibe and Téana must be retrieved before we can decide what to do next. How many can we spare to track them?"_

"_We can make camp here for at least another moon," Elder Pegas says. "Perhaps more. Our food stores are high and there aren't any rival tribes around this area. As you said, the four of them can't have gone far. I suggest we send three of those approaching the Warrior Test. It will be a good assessment of their skills."_

"_I think two untested and one full warrior would be better," Elder Sindin replies. "They'll need some experience to pit against Jono's talent. If Téana really wasn't kidnapped she may be guiding the rest of the deserters, or at least they may be forcing her to use her gifts to help them escape and evade capture. We need to compensate for that."_

"_Send Usi," Elder Goza barks. "He's loyal and a full warrior."_

"_Usi?" Elder Pegas pulls a face. "Isn't he slightly … unbalanced?" He chooses his words carefully, but Elder Goza's face still bulges._

"_Usi is a real man!" he shouts. "He's fearless and merciless! In a battle, I'd stake everything I have on Usi defeating that bastard Jono!"_

_Elder Pegas raises his hands. "Peace, Goza. You have your choice. To go with him as my choice, I suggest Hondo."_

"_Hondo?" Elder Goza echoes. "But he's Jono's friend!" _

_They all know the story: Hondo's parents cared for Jono and Seren after the deaths of their mother and father. There has to be a connection between the two young men after living so closely for so long._

_Elder Pegas smiles. It is like a snake sliding just beneath the sand, where incautious feet are destined to step on it and die. "Hondo is impatient to pass the Warrior Test at the turn of the season. This will be an excellent way for him to show both his skills and his loyalty to the tribe. We could even make this a central part of the Test, since it needs high levels of skill, hard work and intelligence. Either he kills his friend and becomes a full warrior, or refuses and is punished. You can even choose his punishment, Goza. You'd like that." _

"_I don't like it," Elder Goza grumbles._

"_Put it this way: if Hondo stays and we don't test his loyalty, he may hold the death of his friend against us. He's a promising young warrior too, and he's almost as well-liked as Jono. Are you willing to take the risk he won't retaliate someday? This way we can nip the problem in the bud before it has a chance to sprout."_

"_Plant sayings," Elder Goza spits. "You have more green than red in your blood, Pegas."_

"_I recommend sending Makalani as my choice," Elder Sindin butts in. "He's a strapping lad, eager to prove himself, and he has no ties to that traitor Jono the way Hondo does. He can keep an eye on Hondo while Usi takes care of business."_

"_Excellent." Elder Pegas pats his knees and leans forward over his crossed legs to pluck a dried fig from the plate between them. "Then it's decided. I'll inform Usi, Honda and Makalani before sunzenith and tell the women to ready supplies for them. They can take camels to speed their journey. Before the moon waxes full, we should have our lost lambs back with us."_

_Elder Goza's smile reflects his satisfaction that before the full moon his staff will bear the bone of at least one more human finger. _

* * *

Téana's eyes snapped open. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. She spent a few minutes calming herself down, becoming accustomed to the darkness of the narrow cave. She realised belatedly that her hands had bunched in the linen wrapped around herself and Seren. Seren stirred, murmuring in her sleep. Téana gently eased herself out of the warm cloth so she wouldn't wake her. Seren's days were full of enough agony from travelling; there was no reason to disturb her rest as well.

Jono was at the cave mouth. Téana had known he would be, though he looked shocked to see her.

"Téana? Is something wrong?" He turned slightly towards her. "Is Seren all right?"

"She's fine. She's sleeping." Téana wrapped her robes around herself. They were made of light coloured fabric that reflected the heat of the sun during the day, but allowed them to keep warm at night by wrapping their bodies up in their many folds. Despite this, Téana shivered. "I had a Vision."

Jono's expression, illuminated by the moon, darkened at her words. She came close to him, but only so she could look out at the growing disc in the sky. It wouldn't be long until it was full.

"_Before the moon waxes full, we should have our lost lambs back with us."_

"The Elders have sent people after us."

"I thought they would," Jono replied. "That's why I said to stick to the mountains. It's more difficult to track us here – not many could do it."

Téana knew as well as he did that they couldn't keep ducking in and out of caves forever. They needed a destination. Without a clear place to go to, they would wander and eventually be caught. Then they would have to fight their pursuers, or find another solution that didn't end with everyone being killed – or worse. She hadn't had any Visions about what would happen to them if they were taken back to the tribe, but she could imagine.

"Who did they send?" Jono asked.

"Usi, Makalani and Hondo."

Jono actually blanched. "Hondo? And he accepted?"

"They didn't give him a real choice. It's being made into part of his Warrior Test. If he doesn't bring us back he won't pass. If he doesn't even find us, he won't pass. If he tries to defy them and refuse to come after us, he won't pass."

The fate for those young men who didn't pass the Warrior Test was humiliation and eternal disgrace. Only warriors and those with special talents were considered fit to give tribeswomen sons, or travel at the front of the procession when they moved camp, or ride the animals they took with them. Those who didn't pass were forced to forever do the jobs nobody else wanted. They couldn't marry or carry on their family line unless they specialised in something else – and after the disgrace of trying and failing to pass the test, they would have to be phenomenally good or supernaturally gifted. Failed warriors picked up after the animals, buried the camp waste, carried the heaviest packs and lived in the oldest, most threadbare tents. They endured degradation at the hands of those they had once called brothers and could do nothing to save themselves if someone raised a hand against them. Sometimes they left the tribe, but not as Jono's little group had done – chasing freedom and a different way of life. Disgraced men just walked into the desert without provisions and waited for something to put them out of their misery.

Jono's jaw tightened. "Damn it." The hand not around his spear clenched. "_Damn _it!"

He was caught, Téana knew. Honda was like his brother, but Seren was his sister by blood and she needed him. Likewise, Maibe and Téana needed him to protect them now they had stepped out into the unknown together. There was no way they could go back to the tribe, nor did they want to, yet Jono would not want his oldest friend to face disgrace because of him. If Hondo did catch up with them, Jono would have to fight him. Hondo couldn't afford to let them go and couldn't afford to give up chasing them, but there was no way Jono would ever go back with him. It was a death sentence for one of them. Jono's expression said clearly that he understood this fact, and how he felt about it.

"I'm sorry," Téana said.

Jono shook his head. "What are you sorry for? It wasn't your idea to leave."

"No, but I could have said no. I could have stopped this." Her own hands bunched into fists. "My gifts … my inner eye … I'm still not trained enough to use it properly. My Visions come when they want to. If I'd been better at using my talent, I could've foreseen they'd send Hondo after us -"

"There's no use saying things like that," Jono said firmly. "It's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault – except the Elders," he added bitterly. "It seems like their only purpose in life is to make ours more difficult. Damn them. Would it kill them to just let us go? I hope scorpions crawl into their bedrolls."

"It's because of me," Téana admitted in a low voice. "They can't just let us go. If it was just you, Maibe and Seren, maybe they would have, but they want me back. Actually," she corrected herself, "they just want my gifts back. The rest of me is incidental."

Jono shook his head again. "Even if you hadn't agreed to come, they'd have found some other reason to drag us back. I'm a pretty useful resource myself, and so is Maibe – you can't just throw away a fertile woman and a strong young warrior and say 'oh well, plenty more where they came from'. They'd lose face if they let us desert without even trying to punish us. We all knew the risks. You shouldn't blame yourself, Téana. If it hadn't been for you telling us which way to go, we'd have died in that sandstorm two days ago." His face was taut and there were dark rings around his eyes. Téana got the feeling he had spent every night like this since they escaped, watching over them wherever they were in case they needed to move out quickly. She had suggested they share watch duties, but he had dismissed the idea. Now the strain of protecting them was taking its toll.

"I'm sor-"

"I told you not to apologise," he snapped. At her flinch he softened and gestured for her to sit next to him.

Téana hesitated, aware she wasn't his intended. Neither was Maibe, but she had a stronger claim. Or … maybe not. Maibe had some pretty strange ideas about men and women. She had confessed some of them to Téana and Seren as they travelled.

Tentatively, Téana sat beside Jono. She kept her hands folded in her lap. Jono's curved sword sat between them. Though she knew he would never use it on her, or any of them, she took comfort in the physical line it drew between their bodies. Jono was handsome and strong, but Téana felt nothing for him. She was no longer bound by the tribal laws that said she had to accept any man who proposed marriage once she had come of age. The idea was strangely liberating. She looked up at the sky, thinking about all the other rules she had left behind with the tribe.

Otog sometimes said that if a seer concentrated hard, the stars rearranged themselves to show things nobody else could See. Téana had never experienced it, though they had spent long evenings together outside his tent. He had tried to teach her about divining meaning from the night sky. She often frustrated him with how little she seemed able to learn from him. Otog wasn't the best teacher – he was impatient and hot-tempered – but he cared about her in his own way. If they were anything she regretted leaving behind, it was him. She hoped he understood why she had run away.

She stared upwards, hoping she would find guidance in the sky. Had she done the right thing? Guilt made her heart hurt and doubt made her head ache. It wasn't the first time she had asked the question and it wouldn't be the last.

When Maibe had first approached her with the idea of leaving, Téana had been surprised at how eagerly she leapt at the idea. Did she really have such little regard for the people who had raised her? Her parents had given up all claims when she became Otog's apprentice, but she had loved them before that. Why hadn't that been enough to keep her with them?

All doubts aside, she couldn't deny what she felt. She also couldn't deny the peculiar foreboding that had lately followed her like smoke, traceable back to the smouldering mass of interlocking twigs that were her thoughts. She had felt _compelled_ to go with Jono and his group. They needed her somehow – or they were going to need her. It was true that she had Seen the sandstorm coming and directed them to the safety of the mountain range and its hidden caves. If she hadn't been there they would have perished days ago when they first set out. Still, Téana couldn't shake the feeling that this was not the only reason she had left the safety of the tribe. There was more in store for them – and herself – than her limited powers could predict.

As ever, her thoughts went back to the pale stranger who had spent so little time with them, but whose sad eyes had burned a hole in her memory. Téana had also felt there were things in store for that girl – terrible things she couldn't put names to. All her doubts about the tribe and its way of life had started with that stranger. Téana doubted she would ever see the girl again, but the memory of their final conversation followed her around like a phantom – or an omen.

"_A circle may seem to have no end and no beginning, but everything has an ending and a beginning. Some are just easier to see than others. You were kind to me. I call on the spirits of the ocean and of my homeland to guide your path straight and true, from your beginning to your someday end."_

"What should we do?" Téana didn't look at Jono, only listening to his reply.

"Keep one step ahead of them. What else can we do? I know Hondo. He's as good as me at survival techniques and a pretty good tracker. Plus they have Usi leading them. He's as vindictive as the Elders. He won't give up on us even if he has a jackal hanging from every limb and an eagle clawing out his eyes."

Téana couldn't disagree. She had never felt comfortable around Usi. His hulking frame masked a cruelty that chilled her when he talked about choosing a wife. He was greedy and manipulative, and arrogant enough to think that because he was one of their strongest warriors he deserved the best of everything. More than once he had looked at Téana and she had read the desire on his face. They had sent her scurrying into Otog's tent, even though she didn't see Otog as a potential husband either. Still, letting people think the two seers may someday wed was all right if it made Usi leave her alone. Usi took pleasure in hurting others like they were sheep he was readying for slaughter. Any woman he took to his bed would be little more than a piece of meat to him. Maybe there was more to Maibe's ideas of women being more than just wives and mothers than Téana had initially given her credit for.

Suddenly, as her thoughts wandered this unfamiliar and slightly frightening path, Téana's eyes widened. High above, the stars seemed to shift of their own accord. They flickered in and out like fireflies. As she watched, they tugged at their moorings like boats on the Nile when hippos brushed against them. A few burned brighter than the rest, swivelling out of place to form a line across the sky. These streaking away, leaving a green imprint of their path on the backs of her eyes. Téana blinked, watching four tiny stars follow this fading line at a much slower pace, and three other small stars following them in turn. When the four reached the end of the path they found a writhing mass of light and joined it, soon becoming lost amidst the iridescence. When the three remaining stars arrived they skirted around it aimlessly, obviously bewildered. It was as if they couldn't make out the four other stars anymore; they had lost them and moved away sullenly.

"Téana?" Jono's voice cut into her reverie like lightening cutting the sky in two.

Téana fell back into her own head. When she looked up again the stars were as they had always been. It was as though they had never moved at all. They hadn't. It was she who had shifted. Something inside her had altered. Perversely, she wished Otog was here so she could tell him she had finally done it.

"I know where we have to go," she said breathlessly.

"What?"

"I know where we have to go," she said again, turning to Jono and meeting his bewildered gaze. "The great city. The Pharaoh's city! We have to go there. No tracker will be able to find us in a place like that, no matter how skilled they are. In the wilderness they'll pick us out like a black goat on white sand, but in a city with so many other people around it will be easy for us to hide. Whatever the Elders say, they can't chase us forever. Eventually they'll have to recall Usi and the others so they can use them as protection when the tribe decamps. When the season changes and the tribe has to move they'll haveto leave us alone. We just have to hold out until then."

She could see Jono processing the idea. "That might just work," he said at last. "But could we do it? We've never been in a city for more than a day before. Even then it was only for trading and we had adults with us who knew what to do and how to act. Egyptian ways aren't the same as our ways. They're an odd bunch with some pretty bizarre ideas and customs. Could we really live there for as long as we'd need to in order to lose Usi and the others?"

"I think we could. There's no way the Elders could blame anyone for not being able to find us in the Pharaoh's city. _They_ couldn't find their own backsides with both hands in a crowded place like that."

Jono's eyes widened. "Did you really just say that?"

Téana blushed and averted her eyes. What was wrong with her lately? She had been acting so unlike herself. Then she realised Jono was _chuckling_. She looked up at him.

"The world _has_ gone mad," he said. "But I'm glad. Madness may be the only way for us to survive in times like this. And at least your kind of madness has some sanity in it."

Téana gave a small smile. "Perhaps," she said softly, looking back at the stars and their eternal, unwavering light. "If we can't put our faith in sanity, then why not put it in madness and the supernatural?"

"That's so nonsensical it loops right back around to sense again." Jono scratched his head. "I think."

To Egypt, then, and whatever they may find there. Whatever it was, it had to be better than what they were leaving behind. Besides, maybe this was how they would build their future – not scampering across rocks like rats and snakes, but as part of the empire their nomadic tribe had always shunned. It was possible. To Téana, who had woken filled with dreadful thoughts of death and hopelessness, the world seemed suddenly filled with a fresh sense of possibility.

* * *

Otog Strange-Eyes didn't snap his strange eyes open. His lids slid back slowly, revealing wide green irises and tiny pupils. As a child, he had been bullied and ridiculed for his abnormal eye-colouring and aversion to bright light. Being out in the sun caused him no end of headaches and fevers, but he could find his way better than anyone in the dark. Rather than include him in night-time games, or care for him during the day, other children picked on him until he wanted to throw himself off the nearest cliff or pick a rock off that same cliff and bash their brains in – neither of which he had ever done.

It wasn't until his second sight manifested that 'strange eyes' became a compliment instead of an insult – Otog Strange-Eyes, tribal seer, keeper of secrets from the future and the past; the one everyone went to for advice, even before going to the Elders. Otog was young, but people valued what he had to tell them. The very same people who had made him work in the sunshine, through a pounding head and blurry vision, now expected him to tell them they had wondrous things waiting for them in their futures.

His breathing was even, though a little shallow, as it always was when he emerged from a Vision. He spent a few minutes processing what he had seen, letting no outside stimulus interrupt his recall. He realised belatedly that there was a dull ache behind his eyes. He had overstretched himself. He pressed a hand to his forehead, relishing the coolness of his own fingers even though the desert at night was cold. A sharp breeze blew outside his tent, trying to open the flaps.

Unlike Téana, Otog had come into his gifts in his sixth winter. He understood how to use his power for more than just looking into the future. He understood that the future wasn't something you could look into and know with certainty like the present. Time was a fluid thing, unstable as water. You could try to grab onto a piece and study it, but it was like trying to grab handfuls of river with your hands. The past was nothing but stories and memories, the present solid, and the future a range of possibilities you could glimpse but not live in.

Ordinary people had asked about his gifts worked. He had found it difficult to explain to them the sprawling nature of infinite possibility – this future intersected with that one, branched off into that one, doubled back into that one, converged into that one and linked ahead into that one, all seen in a heartbeat. It had been hard enough trying to explain things to Téana. It was unusual for a woman to be a seer, and equally unusual for second sight to emerge so late. Téana had gained her powers when she changed from girl to woman – that odd time when all the women retreated into their tents to whisper about things the men 'couldn't understand'. Even so, Otog had done what the Elders ordered and taken her on as his apprentice. He was only a few years older than her, which had made the arrangement uncomfortable and more than a little embarrassing. Once a month she had to sleep in a separate tent, but otherwise they lived together, sleeping in separate bedding but still close enough for him to wake her when her nightmares got too much. His gifts sometimes made him feel like he was older than even the desert itself, but Téana's innocence had reminded him otherwise.

After a while he had learned to enjoy spending time with her, even if she could be as frustrating as a flea in his ear. He knew there was talk of them marrying. He couldn't say he was opposed to the idea. He did care for Téana in his own way. They were two of a kind. They could understand each other in ways nobody else could – although sometimes even he couldn't understand the way her mind worked.

She had come to him after the strange girl with white hair arrived in their camp. Téana's soft heart had ached to help someone she should have kicked sand at and spat on. She had asked Otog for help, begging him to make the Elders take the stranger in. Otog couldn't help her, though it wasn't because he didn't care. The stranger was an outcast because she was different; how could 'Strange Eyes' discriminate when that could so easily have been him? Yet he couldn't lie to the Elders. When Sindin's eyes rested on him he had been compelled to tell them about the futures of destruction and sorrow trailing behind the stranger like a pennant. None of her possibilities ended happily. She was destined for only tragedy that would bring down anyone who was close to her at the time. Plus, even if the world had changed overnight and the Elders had offered her a place among them, that girl was chasing something else and would continue to do so until her dying day.

Téana hadn't understood. How could she? Nobody knew of his connection to Sindin. She just thought he was being heartless. Téana could be too kind for her own good sometimes.

"She'll die out there on her own!" she had yelled at Otog when nobody was around to hear her disrespecting a male superior. "Don't you care?"

"I care."

"Then why didn't you help? If we had both stood up for her, they would've listened! They couldn't argue with both of us!" Her eyes had been wet with tears. His own had been dry as sand at midday. "We could've said she was lucky or something. Just for a little while…"

"No, we couldn't. That's not the way we work."

"And how _do_ we work, Otog? We just tell them the bits they want to know. When the Elders call us, we edit ourselves. Why don't we tell them the rest? Why can't I speak my mind?" This last question was directed at the floor, not him.

"Because you're not an idiot."

"I feel like an idiot. They're just using us. Sometimes I think they barely see us as people."

"Everybody in the tribe has a place and a purpose." Otog had thought back to Sindin's penetrating gaze but not reacted. He had spent years practising how not to care. "This is ours. You're better off than most."

Téana hadn't said anything to that. Afterwards she had withdrawn into herself, worrying Otog with her constant preoccupation and her reticence when dealing with other tribesman. She was a friendly, outgoing soul, always ready with a kind word and an encouraging smile. Even failed warriors received the same treatment as everyone else. The change in her after the stranger left had disturbed Otog.

"I just … I can't help it," she had said cryptically, sitting across from him in their tent and twisting her hands in her lap. "How do you explain suddenly not wanting to be who you've always been? It's wrong, I know, but … I'm constantly trying to remind myself of how good my life is here. I have a home, I have more status than most women because of you and my gifts, I have you to look out for me, but I don't feel like it's mine anymore."

"It's all still yours if you want it," he had said, wondering if now was the time to ask her to marry him.

"I look at the faces of those around me and I see cruelty where I didn't see it before. It makes me feel ill sometimes. I don't understand, Otog. Why have I become like this? Am I cursed?"

Otog had shaken his head vehemently. "I can't see any black clouds shrouding you. You're not under any enchantment."

"Then what's _wrong_ with me? I've never felt like this before. I used to care about everyone. Now, when I think about the tribe, all I can think about is that girl and Seren, and how unfair it is that I'm not allowed to help them, and how unfair the Elders are for casting them out."

"You've Seen a Vision of them casting out Seren?"

"I didn't need to. It's obvious that's what's they're going to do. It makes me so angry that I just want to … to _burst_." Her nails had cut half-moons into her palms. Though she had kept her eyes lowered, Otog could see the fire burning in them. She used to burn with a similar fire when he taught her new things about her gifts, but she hadn't for some time now. It had been both refreshing and unsettling to see it burn again.

"I think," Otog had said contemplatively, "your gifts are telling you things your gut has already guessed."

"How do I go back, Otog? I hate feeling like this."

"Give it time." After Seren was gone, and after the memory of the stranger had faded, things would go back to normal.

He convinced himself of that because it was what he wanted. He disregarded all the portents that said otherwise, ignoring the first lesson taught to all seers – always listen to your gifts. Instead of accepting the ways things were, he had thought he could make them into what he wanted them to be.

Otog felt disappointed and betrayed when Téana left. He suspected Jono had been the instigator, since they had taken Seren, and he knew enough about Maibe's heart to know that she was a much stronger personality than the tribe usually produced in its women. Maibe was too independent, just as Téana was too compassionate and Seren too frail. None of them truly fitted in here. Not that this was any excuse to just let them escape without reprisal.

For a second Otog felt a flash of hatred. He sat up with a frown. His dream had been of a towering shadow that leaked evil the way a man stuck full of arrows leaked blood. Something was coming; something devastating and big enough to rock all of Egypt. He wanted Téana here with him. Was the hatred for her for leaving? Or was it for the Elders? Once upon a time he hadn't been able to think of them without hatred, but that had been a long time ago – or so he had thought.

Otog tried to seek out Téana's mind and show her the threat so she could prepare herself, but she was shielding herself the way he had taught her. Instead, he found another receptive mind and briefly touched it with his warning. This person wasn't a seer, but her soul had still somehow shown the scars and pockmarks of seeing future possibilities. She had absorbed his message like it was water after a long drought. Otog didn't know what to make of this, except to hope that somehow Téana had also sensed the shadow and was already aware of the impending darkness headed to towards Egypt.

Otog Strange-Eyes rose and breathed deeply. He had to tell the Elders. It would then be up to them how the tribe should proceed – whether they should stay where they were and await the return of Usi's party, or break camp now and leave before it was too late. He stopped when he realised that he hadn't told them he knew Téana hadn't been kidnapped, but had left of her own free will. Why hadn't he shared that? He paused and looked up, imagining the stars peppering the sky above his tent.

_Why couldn't you just stay put and make the most of what you had?_ he asked silently. _Why did you have to risk everything and put me in a position where I'm keeping secrets from the Elders? _

Despite his resentment, he still hoped Téana was safe wherever she was.

* * *

Hondo's eyes snapped open. His breathing was shallow and rapid, until he realised he wasn't under attack. Makalani's eyes peered down at him from between the folds of his howli; the headdress made from long folds of linen they each wore to protect their faces against the sand and wind. Tufts of dark hair poked out. Hondo found himself staring as his eyes became accustomed to the near-darkness.

"Time to get up," Makalani whispered.

"What? It's barely dawn! There are still predators about, and the camels won't be fully rested from yesterday yet."

"Usi's orders. He wants to cover as much ground as possible before the heats of the day sets in. He says the camels can rest then. Watch out for snakes and scorpions. I found one only a handbreadth from my face when I woke up. Nearly wet myself." He sniggered. "Uh, don't tell Usi I said that."

Hondo grumbled but busied himself breaking their tiny camp. There wasn't much to do, since they were travelling so light, but with each task his heart became heavier. He faced yet another day of chasing the four runaways, with nothing but the prospect of disgrace if they didn't catch them, and the death of his best friend if they did. It chafed like a badly fitting bridle that it had fallen to him to bring Jono back for execution. And for what crime? Caring for his sister? Not agreeing with the Elders' decision to murder her? Hondo liked Seren. She may not have been wife material, but she was kind and good. He always felt better after talking with her. Her predicament was a constant reminder why he should be grateful for his own blessings. And what of Maibe? Or Téana? What kind of punishment did _they_ face when the Elders got hold of them? He shuddered to think. It was likely Maibe would be ritually scared as punishment. Even though Téana had been kidnapped, she would probably be awarded to Usi as his wife for him bringing her back. Nobody else had a claim on her yet, after all.

"Hondo." As if on cue, Usi's deep voice pierced the early morning air. His broad shoulders and thick dark hair appeared over the dune. He looked handsome until you saw his face. Usi had well-made features offset by heavy eyebrows, but there was no warmth or sincerity there. Hondo looked into Usi's eyes and saw nothing but arrogance and malice staring back at him.

"Yes, sir?" Usi always insisted they call him sir to make sure they remember he was only one who had passed the Warrior Test.

Usi's voice was deceptively affable. "You know Jono better than any of us, don't you? You've been friends since you were children, right?"

"Um, yes sir." Hondo wondered where Usi was going with this.

"You must know his mind inside-out. What do _you_ think his next logical move would be?"

Hondo hesitated. He desperately wanted to advance up the ranks of the tribe and become a full warrior. It was the best way to gain respect and prove himself a man. He and Jono had dreamed of the day when they passed the Test. They had made plans for how much they would eat and drink to celebrate. It was cruel and unfair that the only way Hondo would ever make their dream a reality was to rob Jono of all _his_ dreams. For a second Hondo wondered if he should lie. He could say Jono would head for the nearest oasis, or trying circle back towards the camp to throw off any pursuers. He could say anything he wanted. Usi wouldn't know the difference.

"Hondo?" Makalani cut in. Hondo looked helplessly at him. Makalani's dreams of passing the Warrior Test hinged on this too. He had done nothing to deserve the disgrace of failure. It was an impossible situation.

Hondo sighed. "He'd stick to the mountains to avoid leaving tracks. That way they don't have to travel so fast and Seren won't be pushed to her limits too quickly. They didn't take any pack animal for her to ride. She's his greatest strength and his biggest weakness – she keeps him going, but slows him down."

Usi nodded, apparently satisfied with this answer. He gave a small but fierce smile. "Then we follow your informed judgement until we find more tracks to guide us. Come on now. The chase awaits."

Hondo moved off with nausea in the pit of his stomach. He reminded himself how badly he wanted to become a full warrior. Jono was the one who had abandoned the tribe. There could only be one consequence of that. Jono must have known that when he decided to leave. Jono had brought this on himself – and on Seren, Maibe and Téana. Whatever happened was all his own fault, not Hondo's. He had put Hondo in an impossible position. Hondo just trying to make the best of it. Why should he have to sacrifice everything he had ever worked for just because Jono had done this at the last minute?

He hoped that if he said these things enough times they would eventually block out the feeling that he had betrayed his best friend and condemned his three travelling companions to death and fates far worse.

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

* * *

As far as possible I've tried to use genuine Egyptian names for the past-selves of existing characters. In addition to the characters from the two previous stories, in this fic we have Hondo (meaning 'war'), who's obviously Honda. We also have Usi (meaning 'smoke'), who is the past-self of Ushio, the crooked hall monitor who beat up Jounouchi and Honda, prompting Yuugi to defend them and thus starting their friendship. The third member of the hunting party is Makalani (meaning 'clerk'), which is a play on the dub name Mako Tsunami (Ryota Kajiki in the original Japanese version, though I have to say he's one of the few character whose dub name I actually prefer). Finally, the three tribal Elders are Goza (past-self of Gozaburo Kaiba, the man who adopted Seto and Mokuba), Sindin (past-self of Sindin Otogi, otherwise known as Mr. Clown, otherwise known as Otogi's psychotic dad in the manga) and Pegas (past-self of Pegasus, whom we all know and love in all his campy, red-suited, wine-swilling glory).


	5. The Art of Running Away

**A/N:** These do seem to arrive like glaciers, don't they? Still, this is a long chapter, so hopefully it was worth waiting for. Feedback appreciated, everyone!

* * *

**5. The Art of Running Away**

* * *

_The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed._ - Carl Gustav Jung.

* * *

"Stop fidgeting. You'll draw attention to us."

"I can't help it. This thing _itches_!"

"That's because you're supposed to shave your head before wearing it."

"Really? But … huh?" Jono was too stunned to come up with a suitable response. "Your _whole_ head?"

Where they came from it was unheard of for anyone to shave themselves the way Egyptians apparently did. Howli usually covered their hair anyway, and the light-coloured material of their outer robes and headgear reflected the sun's rays, so there was no need for elaborate shaving rituals. In fact it was considered unsightly _not _to have hair on your head. Men who had lived long enough to lose theirs wore their howlis all the time to keep from feeling self-conscious.

"Yes," said Téana.

"But that's …" This was only the latest thing to shock Jono since they entered the city. The big brave would-be warrior had been laid low by something as small as fashion.

"You're the one who said Egyptian ways aren't our ways, Jono," Téana pointed out.

"Yes, I know, but still … they shave their heads but put on fake hair afterwards? Why bother to go to all that trouble? It doesn't make any sense." He touched the straight black wig. He had twisted it half a dozen times to make it sit right over his own sandy hair. "This is real hair, not from an animal. You're telling me that someone shaved all this off and sewed it into this shape just so they could stick it _back_ on their head? It doesn't make any _sense_."

Téana exchanged a look with Maibe, who rolled her eyes.

"Wigs are a sign of status," Téana informed him quietly. "We look and sound different enough with our clothes and accents. We have to blend in if we're going to stay here and go unnoticed."

"So if you don't want to be mistaken for a slave or something, just wear the wig and close your mouth," Maibe hissed.

"Even if it _is_ uncomfortable." Téana resisted the urge to scratch her scalp until the heavy wig. "This is a good plan, Jono."

He remained unconvinced, but did as she said. It spoke volumes for the trust he placed in her word.

Téana couldn't let him down. She squared her shoulders and marched towards the marketplace. She refused to show fear after all they had gone through to get here, _especially _since Seren was right there listening. Seren needed them to be focussed, not indecisive. "We need to fit in if we're going to avoid detection."

"She's right, Jono," Maibe's tone was snappish, but she lightly touched Jono's arm before following Téana. She had been doing that a lot more lately. It was as if each contact was a rude gesture to the strict tribal rules governing how men and women had to act around each other. Maibe was relishing her new freedom. She kept declaring she wanted more from life than to be a wife or a mother, as if challenging them to contradict her. Her eyes flashed when she so bright that nobody saw fit to argue.

Jono sighed and stopped adjusting his wig. "Seren, are you all right?"

The smallest one among them nodded. Seren opened and shut her eyes like someone emerging from deep sleep, though she had been awake for hours. Seren had a habit of blinking a lot. Her eyes seemed to dry out more easily than most. She often had to squint to see things. Her eyesight faded a little more each day. Nobody talked about it while she was around, but she was intelligent enough to develop ways of compensating on her own.

To that end she had started carrying around a long, straight tree branch Jono had stripped and shaped for her. The wood wasn't treated, so she had to keep her hands wrapped in linen to prevent splinters, but it was strong. It served as a walking staff when she got tired and, by tapping the ground in front of her, she could also use it to tell whether she was about to walk into or trip over something. Téana wondered what the Elders would think of her. Would they still be so harsh if they saw her overcoming what they had written off as hopeless weaknesses?

_Of course they would_, she thought grimly. She remembered the conversation she had 'overheard' and shivered.

"It sounds like a big crowd," Seren said softly. She gripped her staff tighter until Maibe put a comforting hand on her arm.

"Don't worry. Téana knows what she's doing."

Téana wished she had as much faith in herself as Maibe did. Come to think of it, she wished she had as much faith as they _all_ did. They all assumed she would somehow know what to do. It had, after all, been her idea to come to the city to hide from their pursuers.

Her gifts had gotten them this far. A Vision came to her last night of how to enter the city without making themselves too conspicuous as outsiders. She, Maibe and Seren all wore jewellery made of beads and precious stones. They had either made it or had it passed down through generations of their family. When they left the tribe they had brought what they could carry, knowing they might have to trade it away for food, water, or travel. They had chosen not to trade immediately because they were still too near the encampment. The jewellery would signpost them to their pursuers. Now, however, they had to make use of their limited resources.

Téana had traded a delicate necklace of red beads and a single polished stone. It had bought their wigs and fresh sets of reed sandals to replace the threadbare ones on their feet. Their long trek through the mountains had not been kind to their footwear, but they were too used to wearing sandals to go barefoot like a lot of Egyptians did. Their feet weren't callused enough to cope; plus, hidden scorpions and snakes were easy to step on in the wilderness if you weren't careful. They had all grown up with the story of how Elder Pegas once saved his young wife by throwing a sandal at a wildcat and breaking its neck.

Téana could do nothing about their clothes, but judging by the number of merchants wearing similar garments, that wouldn't be much of a problem. The women walking around in tunics that reached only to their knees did make Téana pause. She regarded her own floor-length robes. Should they invest in new clothes after all? The movement made the wig brush against the back of her exposed neck.

It felt odd not to be wearing her howli, but she would just have to get used to it if her plan was going to succeed. The object was to wait for the tribe to break camp, and for their three pursuers to stop chasing them and go back before the tribe moved on without them. It was a good plan, definitely doable, except for one thing – Jono, Maibe, Seren and Téana had to survive in a city they had barely visited before. The city brimmed with customs they didn't know and bristled with swords to punish those who broke the rules. They had to keep their heads down, not offend anyone and not draw attention until they could safely leave again.

They hadn't said as much, but Téana knew they were counting on her and her second sight to help them. They had come from a world where life was guided by seers and almost nobody questioned them. The claws of that way of thinking were dug deep. The pressure was intense. She didn't feel able to keep pointing out she was an apprentice who hadn't fully grown into her abilities yet. She looked around and came close to being overwhelmed at the size of the task before them.

It was ridiculous, but Téana felt like every set of eyes was on them. Everyone was judging them, _knowing_ they had no right to be there. What was she supposed to do? They had no idea what they were doing.

"I'm hungry," Seren said eventually, as they leaned against a wall. Her knees were shaking from being on her feet so long and her hands tightened reflexively around her staff.

They watched the bustling crowds while wiping sweat from their eyes. People traded for everything here, but they were a canny bunch and would take any unsuspecting wretch for all they could get. They had nothing to sell or buy with, unless you counted their meagre jewellery or weapons – neither of which was going to happen. They needed to keep both for now. Jono carried his sword and spear openly, as he was accustomed to, but Téana, Maibe and Seren hid their protective knives in the folds of their clothes. They were hungry, footsore and frightened. Their first destination had to be somewhere to eat and rest while they took stock and assessed their next move.

"I am too," Maibe chipped in. "I could really go for some boiled mutton right now."

"Or salted beef," Jono agreed.

"Or dried dates."

"Or figs. I'd love some sweet figs."

Téana gritted her teeth. "You're not helping."

"Sorry, Téana," Seren apologised hastily. She was always so eager not to offend anyone. Téana supposed being told your whole life that you were useless made you receptive to any small kindness, and eager to ensure there were more of them. What she, Maibe and Jono done for her was anything but small, and so Seren constantly went out of her way to express her gratitude and make herself as unobtrusive as possible. Sometimes her unremitting politeness was painful, suggesting she thought that if she didn't keep it up they'd cast her out like the Elders planned to.

Téana sighed. It was impossible to be angry with Seren. "It's all right. I just need some … some time."

"We should get something to eat," Jono said needlessly. "Food always helps me think better."

"That's not a surprise," Téana snapped. She pulled herself up at shocked expression. It wasn't like her to snap – or it hadn't been before she turned her world upside down. Maybe this was a brand new Téana to go along with her brand new life. "Look, just stay here, all right? I think I saw a merchant selling bread on the other side of the market. I'll … I'll see what I can trade." She swallowed a dry throat. "Perhaps I can get some information too. We need a place to stay and we're not going to find one if we just wander around aimlessly."

"I'll come too," Maibe said, but Téana waved her away.

"No! No, I need some time to … think. To order my thoughts." Téana attempted to reassure them by adding, "It's a seer thing. Please, just stay where I know you are, look after our things and _don't move_ until I get back." She tried to inject the same authority into her tone that Otog always used. When he made proclamations of Visions to the whole tribe, everyone listened to him.

Jono, Seren and Maibe nodded. Seren slid gratefully down the wall and sat cross-legged on the floor. As Téana walked away, Maibe and Jono joined his little sister. She could feel their eyes on her until she disappeared behind the first line of people.

They didn't mean to pressure her. She knew that. In the days since they fled the camp she had grown closer to Maibe, Jono and Seren than she ever had to anyone except Otog.

Otog was special. As the only other seer in the tribe, and the master to her apprentice, he and Téana shared a bond non-seers couldn't understand. He had taught her about her gifts, about herself, and about the world they lived in – but she had left all that behind. Regret kept jabbing her. She hoped that Otog, of all people, would understand why she had done what she had done. She hoped even more that he would forgive her. Despite her apprehensions and worries, she didn't regret leaving. That had to count for something, right?

Aside from Otog, Téana had never been closer to anyone than Jono, Maibe and Seren. Even her parents had been distant with her before they gave her to Otog. Jono, Maibe and Seren had allowed her a chance at freedom she would never have taken on her own. They had shared food with her, which nobody in the tribe had been brave enough to do since she came into her gifts. Being a seer was a double-edged sword: she was revered as a font of knowledge, respected and given status women weren't usually allowed, but people were scared of her and what she could tell them about themselves. It was a lonely life. Jon, Maibe and Seren were the first people in a long time to treat her like a regular human being. When she took her food and went to sit away from them, as she was used to doing, they had told her to stay. When she had apologised for being the reason Usi's band was chasing them, they had reassured her.

"For pity's sake, you're our friend, Téana," Maibe had said with exasperation.

"I am?"

"Sure." Jono had wiped his nose self-consciously and pretended to examine their surroundings so he didn't meet Téana's surprised gaze. Until then, she had thought she was only along for the ride because they needed her gifts. "You think anyone except friends would do something this stupid for each other?"

They were her friends. They relied on her skills just as she relied on theirs – their protection, their companionship and just the knowledge that their presence by her side was voluntary. As a result, Téana felt responsible for their well-being. She wanted them happy and safe. As the man, Jono was their protector, but Téana felt some of that burden on her own shoulders as well.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a shout. She turned to see a child in a white loincloth careening away from a red-faced man with a belly the size of a sand dune. The child's head was shaved except for a thin strip of black hair at the base of his skull, which flapped behind him as he ran.

"Stop! Thief!" the man yelled. "Get back here!" He huffed and wheezed, his face reddening even further. People moved aside for him, but nobody tried to catch the boy.

Suddenly the man froze. He clutched at his left arm and his entire body convulsed. He fell over without even trying to brace for impact, like a tree felled by a bolt of lightning. The ground didn't vibrate when he hit, but it felt like it should have.

Cries went up from the crowd. Téana found herself carried forward. She had to fight to keep herself from being crushed. Her badly fitting wig skewed sideways, allowing some of her own brown hair to show. She hastily fixed it and ducked low, scurrying along practically on her hands and knees, holding her robes up so she didn't trip over them. She kept one hand on the dagger strapped to her upper thigh, just in case, as she tried to avoid the jostling bodies and sharp elbows.

She was so busy making sure she still had her meagre valuables and wig that she didn't realise she had brought herself out at the front of the crowd until she ducked under an arm and found herself staring into the florid face of the fat man.

He wasn't so red anymore. In fact, he was more purplish-blue. Téana froze, wanting to go back, but the bodies behind her slid shut on any gaps. They pressed further forward, as if eager to watch the man die. Nobody was trying to help him. There was no sign of the thief boy, either.

Téana stared at the man. His lips were violet. His breath came in tiny, ragged gasps. His eyes were shut and the sweat rolling down his face had soaked the dirt around his head. His wig had fallen off, revealing a bald head beaded with perspiration. He looked like a disgusting, overheated giant baby.

Something knotted in her stomach. Repulsion? Fear? Stranger or not, she couldn't watch him die in the dirt like this.

The entire world seemed to fade away around her. Like the breaking of a wave, her body flooded with curious energy. Without knowing quite what she was dong, Téana fell to her knees beside the man and made a fist with her right hand. Holding her arm steady by gripping her right wrist in her left hand, she raised both arms above her head and thumped the fist down as hard as she could, right in the centre of the fat man's chest. His body convulsed. She raised her arms and did it again, and then again, heedless of anything around her.

On the fourth hit, the man's eyes flew open. He let out a whoosh of air as powerful as a sandstorm in the open desert. Flecks of saliva spattered Téana's face and she experienced the full force of his horrible breath – like goat meat left out in the sun too long. His gasps deepened and his chest inflated. A more natural colour returned to his cheeks. He lay there, panting and still sweating, but alive. Téana gratefully let go of her own wrist and wiped her brow with the back of it.

She froze, realising what she had just done. So much for keeping a low profile. She scrambled to her feet, forcing her way through the crowd with elbows like sharpened spears.

"Hey, wait," people as she passed by. "Stop! Come back!"

She ran as fast as she could, unmindful of anything except a need to get away from the spectacle she'd just made of herself and put distance between herself and questions she didn't want to answer. True, she'd just saved a man's life, but at what cost to her own safety and anonymity – _and_ that of her friends? And where had the knowledge of what to do _come from_? It was as though her body had been acting without her. Certainly it had acted without her consent.

_This must be one of the things Otog meant when he said a seer's gifts aren't just for looking into the future_.

Téana cursed herself and kept on running, breaking through the other side of the crowd. She dashed down an alley between two square, flat-roofed buildings before anyone could follow. She couldn't use her second sight when it mattered, but she could use it to save someone she didn't even know? Or rather her powerscould use heras they pleasedand make her risk so much for so little. The unfairness made her eyes burn with tears.

Maybe it was her blurred vision, or her breakneck pace, or the unfamiliar alley, but she didn't see the other person until she collided with him. Téana fell backwards, scraping her elbow down the wall and leaving a bloody smear. She fell on her backside and stared in alarm, holding her cut.

_Even better_, she thought bitterly. _This is probably some nobleman who will have me carted away to be beheaded for daring to touch him_. She got to her feet, intending to run back the way she had come, but the other person groaned. She froze, undecided. Had she hurt him?

"A-Are you all right?"

The figure got up. The masses of swirling robes made Téana doubt her assumption she had crashed into a man. Didn't only women wear so many layers? The person even had a hood pulled so high she couldn't make out a face.

"Do you make a habit of wrestling people to the ground for their purses and then not finishing the job?" The voice was indeed male, and derisive.

"Wh-What?" she stuttered.

"Is it not customary for your knife to be in your hand at this point?"

She looked down to where he gestured. Her outer robe had fallen back, revealing the protection knife strapped to her thigh. Thoughts clicked together in her mind. This person thought she was a common _thief_?

"That's only for protection! I wasn't trying to rob you, um, good sir." She bowed her head a little. A curtain of black hair eased forward either side of her face, framing her vision. Hopefully it would also make her unidentifiable if he tried to recall her later. "I wouldn't. I was just, um, in a hurry. I didn't mean to crash into you. It was an accident –"

"Indeed." His disbelief was palpable. There was something haughty about his tone, like the refined voices of scribes her tribe had dealt with when bringing wares to trade in the city. There were so many rules here and scribes always acted like you were an idiot if you didn't know the ins and outs of every single one.

Téana raised her eyes but kept her face lowered, trying to see the face under the hood. He sounded like an educated person, but she could see no wisp of wig. Maybe he was just an apprentice or something, or an errand boy from a rich household. That would explain why he was in a deserted alley instead of crossing the main thoroughfare.

"I believe you," he said. "No thief would be so inept as to stay with her victim and ask after his welfare."

Téana bristled. _Excuse me for having a conscience._

"Besides which, it doesn't seem to have occurred to you that _I _could also be concealing a weapon. You are very trusting, very stupid, or very new to the city. I would say that you are new here, but hesitate to dismiss the other two options just yet."

Her hackles had risen, but went down his words. She tried to remember the proper way to address someone above your station. Even if he was an errand boy, maybe he would be so flattered by her deference he would let her leave. "I believe you are mistaken, good sir -"

"No, I am not." One hand rose and gestured at the outside of his hood. "Your real hair is showing."

Téana's hands went to her head. Her wig had been knocked completely sideways and a swathe of brown hair had tumbled from underneath. Her mind filled with all the curses she'd picked up from Jono.

"Not all wealthy people in this city wear wigs, but those who do have no need of hair. To wear both hair and wig strikes me as very greedy." The person altered his stance slightly, sliding his weight onto the balls of his feet the way Téana had seen Jono do when he thought they were about to be attacked. "Or very stupid. Who are you?"

"Nobody of any importance."

"That is not an answer. Who are you? What is your name?"

_No, no, no, no… _It was all going wrong. Téana took a step backwards. "I'm no threat to you. Please, just let me go."

"That I cannot allow. You are a foreigner, yet you try to masquerade as an Egyptian noblewoman – badly, I might add. What possible reason could there be for this except ill will? Are you an assassin? Have you come to do mischief here?"

"An … what? I mean, excuse me?" The idea was so ridiculous she nearly snorted out loud. "Of course I'm not! I'm nobody. I only want to go on my way without bothering anyone." She took another step away.

"This city is a hotbed at the moment. The new Pharaoh's crowning ceremony grows closer by the day. Could it be you have been sent to impersonate a woman of noble birth so you can grow closer to him in turn, only to murder him? Although I have to say, your skills of subterfuge are terrible."

"I'm not an assassin!" Téana protested.

"So you say."

"I'm really not! I'm … a traveller." An idea occurred to her. "I came here to trade. I have jewellery, made by women in my tribe -"

"You're a nomad?"

_Damn._ If she tried to lie too much she would only make herself more suspicious. "Yes. I came into the city to trade, nothing more."

"You have very few wares for a trader."

"I ... left them with my, um, fellow-traders."

"A trader who abandons her wares?"

"I went looking for food and got caught up in a crowd. I was trying to find my way back to my companions when I bumped into you – which was a complete accident, by the way!"

"You speak with such common parlance," the stranger said contemptuously.

_And you talk like a stuck-up camel-humper_, Téana thought back, but didn't dare to say. She wondered what 'parlance' meant, but could work it out from the context.

"You must be very eager to return to your companions, to be running at such a speed."

She nodded. "I am."

"Or perhaps you are actually running away from some mischief you have yourself committed." Quicker than she could follow, he shot forward. Her back rammed against the wall and she felt the cold edge of a knife at her throat. "Who are you really? And please save your lies. You have no breath to spare for them. Speak, or I shall silence you forever."

Panic arced from her stomach into her chest, making her breathing accelerate and her skin tingle. She had thought she knew what fear felt like before, but it was nothing compared to this kind of terror. "I-I …"

"Speak!" He pressed the knife closer.

"My name is Téana!" she squeaked. Her words came so fast they blurred together at the edges. "I'm a seer from a tribe of nomads who wander the wilderness! We do sometimes come down into cities to trade, and we've been here before with jewellery, but today I'm here because I've run away and I'm hiding from the men they've sent to recapture me. That's why I was trying to disguise myself, and why I need to get back to my friends. They're in danger too. I need to stay hidden until the tribe breaks camp and the men chasing me return to them. If I can stay out of their hands until then I'll be free to live my own life, however I see fit."

The knife did not let up. "And the reason you were running?"

"I saved the life of a man in the market. I didn't want anyone to be able to recognise me if the story gets around. There was a crowd."

The sharp edge pressed incrementally closer still.

"It's the truth! Please! I'm not lying! You have to believe me!"

"You don't want to be discovered, but you make a public display and then compound it by running away?"

"I wasn't thinking clearly. I'm only an apprentice seer! Sometimes my gifts do things on their own. Plus I … I couldn't just stand by and watch that man die. Nobody else was helping him, and suddenly I knew what to do …" She trailed off. "You still don't believe me, do you?"

He said nothing.

Téana screwed up her face. She had heard stories of what it was like to have your throat cut. You could survive if you were lucky and the cut wasn't too deep, but if the life-vein in your neck was slashed there was no hope. If you didn't die straight away, and didn't find help, you drowned in your own blood. _Please, just let it be quick. I'm sorry, Jono, Maibe, Seren –_

"I believe you." The pressure against her throat vanished.

Téana slumped to the floor, shaking. "Y-You … do?"

"I do." The stranger re-sheathed his knife under his cloak and held out a hand to her. "Was your life with your people really so terrible?"

She stared at his open palm.

"There is no blade in it now. Staring will not make one appear."

"You seriously expect me to take your hand now?"

He bent his elbow, obviously looking at it, and then stretched out his arm again. "I do. It is a perfectly good hand. It has helped many people to their feet."

"And how many of them did you nearly just murder?"

He paused. "Apparently my blade loosened your tongue more than I intended."

Using the wall for support, Téana got up on her own. She kept her distance, watching warily in case he tried to pull that knife again. And who was to say it was his only one? Could she beat him by drawing hers and using it first? "I don't usually trust people who make me bleed." She brushed a palm against her throat, swiping away the thin trickle of red there.

"My apologies. My hand was evidently not as steady as I assumed. I did not intend to cause actually harm."

"You could've fooled me."

He paused, as if processing her words. Then he laughed. He actually _laughed_.

"So you don't think I'm an assassin anymore?" Téana tried.

"I reserve judgment on that; but I believe you when you say you are running away." He dropped his hand to his side, but she saw it was clenched into a loose fist. "I know a little about running away."

"You're not a, uh, nomad." It felt so odd, using that word. It wasn't one her people used on themselves.

"No, I am not."

"You sound like someone from a noble's household, but your cloak is old."

"It is?"

"It looks like it's been passed down a few generations and worn in some heavy storms."

"When storms strike the city, we shelter indoors to preserve our clothes and our lives."

"Lucky you."

"You are a strange one," he said, tipping his head to one side. A sliver of chin came into view below his hood, but disappeared when he righted his head. "You talk like you have no respect, but I do not think you are trying to be purposely disrespectful. It is …"

_Annoying? Off-putting? Punishable? Insolent?_

"Refreshing," he finally settled on, and in a quite different tone than before. He sounded almost … wistful?

She couldn't explain it, but Téana suddenly and unexpectedly felt sorry for this person. She didn't know his name, his circumstances, or even what his face looked like, but there was something so sad about him that it seemed to shroud his entire body like mist.

She gave a small, sharp intake of breath when she realised she really _could_ see mist around him. It floated without touching, but didn't go away even when he moved. He didn't seem to notice it, which meant this was her second sight telling her things her mortal eyes could not. A scrap of mist floated towards her. It touched her cheek, igniting a flash of deep unhappiness and anger at some unknown injustice. She heard the keening wail of mourners, people stamping their feet in grief, and sensed that in this person's soul was a gaping wound where someone precious used to be.

"You're … oh!" she stammered. "I'm sorry."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm so sorry for your loss."

He stiffened. "What do you know of it?" His voice turned harsh and accusing again.

"Only what I can sense. You're sad. And you're also angry. Someone has left you – or maybe you're angry about how they left you." Téana pressed the fingertips of one hand against her forehead. "It's … very unclear and hard to explain, but your emotions … I can _taste_ them …" She became conscious of what she was saying. "I'm sorry; that sounds really weird."

"Weird?" he echoed the word like he didn't know it.

"Odd. Strange. I didn't mean to be rude. It's none of my business. You've been, um, merciful in letting me live and I'm grateful, uh, good sir. May the Great Spirits bless you and your children's children."

"Great Spirits?"

Oh, yes, they believed in different things here, didn't they? Téana had grown up knowing the Great Spirits watched over the world they'd created, sometimes interfering with the lives of humans and bestowing gifts to a special few – like her second sight. People from outside the tribe believed in gods and goddesses, with an elaborate religion built up around them. Otog had tried to teach her about it, but she hadn't really paid attention.

Once more the enormity of fitting in here threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn't possibly learn all there was to know without having more knives pressed against her throat, and next time the outcome might not be so lucky.

"Um, it's … never mind. It's a compliment."

"I see." The stranger's tone was still haughty, but there was also an edge of curiosity to it. "I have never before met anyone from one of the nomad tribes."

"Well I've never talked to an Egyptian like this before, so I suppose that makes us even."

"Not many people would speak to me in such a bold manner."

"They wouldn't?" Damn it, he _was_ some kind of noble.

"Though sometimes I wish they would. My friends speak to me the way you do. Come, walk with me."

"Excuse me?"

"Are you deaf? I told you to walk with me. I wish to know more about your tribe and the life of a nomad."

"B-But -"

"Have you somewhere else you urgently need to be? Your companions can endure for a short while without you. You will return to them unharmed."

Téana thought about Seren, Maibe and Jono. She _should_ get back to them.

"And perhaps, if you wish it, I could inform you of some ways in which to pass less noticeably during your stay here."

Then again …

* * *

"So how much _do_ you know of the city?"

"Very little. I didn't even know the old king had died until I got here and heard people talking about it. I've only been here once, as a child, before my gifts manifested. Seers are too precious to allow out of camp." Téana studied the ground. "It's … quite a sheltered existence. There are a lot of rules about what you can and can't do – more can'ts than cans. It was very stifling. Sometimes I felt like I couldn't sit down without getting permission first."

"As is always the way with those who hold positions of responsibility. Theirs is a heavy burden, and it is the duty of those around them to ensure they can shoulder it without it crushing them."

"Even those who never asked for it," she muttered. She had thought her voice too low for him to hear, but apparently he did.

"_Especially _those who have responsibility thrust upon them." He paused and dropped his own voice. "Even those who would wish to run away from what is asked of them but know they cannot."

Was that another insult? It was far subtler than any he'd paid her since they met, so she couldn't be sure. "Excuse me, but we've been walking for a while now."

"Are you tired? I thought all nomads had legs as tireless as nature itself."

"Not really. We're just as human as you."

"Hmm, maybe not as I."

_Arrogant –_

"The new pharaoh talks of a society without social boundaries, in which nobles and commoners rub shoulders as equals. I had not thought to include Egyptians and nomads in that."

"It sounds like a lovely dream."

"You think he cannot achieve it?"

"I'm not sure anyone could. It'd be a mammoth task for the Great Spirits themselves, much less one man. People are people. They'll always hate and fear and distrust each other, and if they don't have good reasons to do it, they'll invent some. When they give in to their own dark desires and impulses, they can do awful things. Everybody has the potential to go bad."

"You have little faith in humanity."

"I have plenty of faith; I just know humanity's limitations. People can't help being people, and people will always have a little bit of darkness in their hearts – even the nicest ones."

"But how could you know … oh, yes, you are a seer. You have probably Seen into hundreds of hearts and observed darkness in all of them."

"No, my gifts don't work like that, but I know enough about people to know everybody's the same in that way. Weren't you the one who said the new pharaoh wants a world where everybody's the same? Well, they are when you're talking about their hearts." Téana paused for a second. "But it _does_ work both ways. Just as everyone has some darkness inside them, everybody also has some light as well. Even the most vicious criminal may have some speck of light in his soul – he might be a loving father to his children, or a dutiful son, or something like that. I'm not saying people are all good or all bad. They do good things for bad reasons and bad things for good reasons, they don't like what they don't understand, everyone likes to feel they're better than at least one other person, and no single man can change all of that."

"But the Pharaoh is the gods' avatar on earth. He has the might of the pantheon behind him."

"Pan-theee-on?" Téana struggled with the unfamiliar word, just as he had struggled with 'weird'.

"All the gods together are a pantheon, and the Pharaoh has their combined might behind him. His fist is the fist of Ra. His breath is the breath of Thoth. His command is the command of Anubis. If anyone can change the world, surely he can once he ascends to the throne." There was a strange, almost pleading note buried in his tone that Téana couldn't understand.

"If he wants to try then I wish him all the best, but I still don't think it'll work."

"Such insolence! You insult our new king!"

Téana froze. Had she really? She went back over her words and realised that she probably had, but when she tried to apologise he waved away her words with the flick of his hand.

"No, it is better you have an opinion than simply nod and agree with everything you hear. Even so, I will continue to disagree with your claim that his dreams for the world can never be. I have faith that one day everybody in his lands will be equal and treated as such."

"It's good to have faith," Téana said quietly. "Just as long as it doesn't blind you to the truth."

"Well said. You speak with much wisdom. Is this because you are a seer or because you are naturally wise?"

"Uh…"

"Certainly it cannot be because of your age." It didn't sound like something that needed a response, but Téana did anyway.

"Excuse me, but with all these weighty discussions, it feels odd to me that I still don't know who you are. You've insulted me more times than I can count, threatened my life, and I've offended you probably even more than that, but I still don't even know your name. Please, tell me, what should I call you?"

"You may call me Ammon, Téana the seer of the nomad tribe ... erm … it seems I have the same problem as you. What is the name of your tribe?"

Téana was nonplussed at the question. "We don't call ourselves by any name. We're just ourselves; our own tribe and our own people."

"But surely others call you by something? How else do you know you are not part of another tribe when they wander past?"

"People just know. You can't forget who and what you are, or who you've lived with all your life." She wracked her brains. "The other tribes called us Black Dragons, I think."

"A formidable name. All right; then you may call me Ammon, Téana the Seer of the Black Dragon Tribe." He halted.

Téana looked around. They were back where they had started. He had walked her in and out of the buildings with ease, until she was totally lost and had been forced to trust that he wasn't out to do her a mischief. Evidently her trust had not been misplaced. During their talk he had indeed furnished her with several tips on how to survive in the city without drawing attention to themselves – not that he knew he'd been helping her learn how to take care of Seren, Jono and Maibe as well. He thought she was travelling alone and she was content to let him think that. After all, despite trusting and liking this person – Ammon, she corrected herself – after spending time with him, how much did she actually know about him? Not enough to risk her friends' lives on his word that he wouldn't let something slip in a conversation once he'd left her – something that might get back to Usi, Hondo and Makalani if they tracked them to the city. Ammon had proved he liked to talk, and talk at length. Téana couldn't depend on his loose tongue not revealing that all four runaways were here.

"I have … enjoyed talking with you," Ammon said with a hint of surprise. "You make good conversation, for a barbarian."

"Is that really how you see nomads – as barbarians?"

"It is how most Egyptians see them, though after today I would like to revise my opinion – if only for their seers."

Téana's cheeks heated. She ducked her head, allowing a sweep of black hair to conceal her expression. What was that all about?

Ammon sighed. "As I said before, those with hair have no need of wigs. If you are going to stay in the city you must either cut off your own hair or stop wearing that ridiculous thing."

She blushed harder, this time with embarrassment. "I couldn't cut my hair. I may have left my tribe, but I can't simply abandon _everything_ I know. It's part of who I am."

"Then it is lucky you have come to the city after the time when only slaves went without wigs. Your own hair will not betray you if you insist on keeping it – but only if you remove the wig. It is an eyesore."

Gingerly, Téana pulled the black hair forward, spitting out a little that went in her mouth. Her own hair wafted around her shoulders, dry at the bottom but damp on top with the heat and sweat of being confined. She smoothed it down. Ammon had kept the upper half of his face hidden the entire time, so she was shocked to find herself meeting his gaze when she looked back at him.

"The stories are not true, then," he said.

"What stories?"

"That barbarian nomad women are covered in hair like sheep's wool from their necks to their scalps."

"You mean you couldn't tell that before?" she said, affronted. Then she saw his smile and realised he was joking. It was a surprise, but a nice one – especially considering how he had acted around her the last time they stood on this spot. "We don't have horns or fangs, either."

"You have strange eyes," he said suddenly. "Blue. Why?"

"I was born with them." What a bizarre question.

"Very few people here are born with blue eyes. Those who are tend to be exceptional in some way."

"Um …" Téana looked at him. He had odd eyes himself – such a startling shade of violet that beneath the shadow of his hood they looked almost purple. They were rimmed with kohl, making them stand out even more.

"Hmm." He turned abruptly away from her, pulling his hood up further. His strange eyes disappeared. "I think I would like to talk with you again, Téana of the Black Dragons."

"Since I don't know where I'll be living, that might be a problem."

"You will find something. I can tell you are resourceful. You remind me of another girl I know, though I think you might be more sensible, and certainly you act more mature. Still, she is apt at finding inventive ways of getting herself out of whatever mess she gets herself into. You have the same kind of ingenuity, I think. Plus, you have your gifts to help you."

Téana suppressed a groan. Here was someone else who thought her gifts were the answer to all her problems. What would it take to make the world understand they didn't _work_ that way? Relying on her gifts to overcome every single difficult in her life was like trying to use a spear to catch everything from mice to cows. The accuracy couldn't be maintained with such disparate targets. Too much or too little would only end in failure and an empty belly, and sometimes your throw went wide no matter how hard you tried to hit your mark. That was assuming your spear didn't break before you even started. Sometimes, when trying and failing to use her gifts consciously instead of just waiting for them to work on their own, Téana felt like she was grabbing for sunbeams.

She was so preoccupied with her own thoughts that she didn't hear Ammon speak until he turned around.

"Téana?"

"Huh? I mean, yes?"

He lifted his hood to meet her gaze again. His face was all sharp lines and angular features, but it was still his eyes which held her. "If I met with you again, would you speak with me as you did today?"

She swallowed and affected a light-hearted tone. "What, you mean offend you, your king, your country, your gods and your customs? Yes, I think I can manage that."

He smiled. It completely changed his face, turning it from severe to … Téana didn't know the right words to describe it. Even though she could only see from his eyebrows to his chin, she felt certain she would be able to recognise Ammon in a crowd, now even with his hood down.

"Then I shall look forward to it." With that he turned on his heel and marched away.

Téana watched him go, a curious feeling swirling inside her. She kept staring even after he turned the corner and disappeared from view. She stared until the backs of her eyes hurt and she had to shut them. They stung, watering slightly – but when she opened them again she didn't see the mouth of the alley or the blocky corner of the house.

A thin man sat on a low three-legged stool in a room, his face in his hands and his back bowed with despair. As Téana watched, he left the stool and went to kneel by a set of four pegs rammed into the floor. The pegs formed a crude rectangle, and between them lengths of thread were stretched. The man was turning them into cloth, but his hands were shaking and he kept releasing the threads before he wanted to. He tried to stop himself, but he couldn't. He was obviously too old for the work, but he laboured on, taking twice as long to finish his task. By the end his fingers were chafed and a thin line of blood ran down his left thumb. He sat back on his heels and looked around the empty room, sighing deeply and murmuring something Téana couldn't hear.

Her thoughts snapped back like a whip. Her head actually rocketed backwards, and she stared up at the sky while she waited for the dizziness to stop.

"Thank you," she murmured, not sure if she was addressing her inner eye, the Great Spirits, or something else. "I guess I should take my own advice and have more faith."

When she finally returned to the where she'd left Seren, Maibe and Jono she was greeted enthusiastically – and angrily. Seren was just glad she was all right, but Jono and Maibe were furious. She'd been away far too long and they'd been worried.

"We thought Usi and his crew might have gotten here before us and captured you!" Jono said in a thunderous whisper, eyes darting as if he expected them to burst out of the crowd at any moment.

"How could they have known this is where we were heading?" Téana asked reasonably.

"But where _were_ you?" Maibe demanded. "We saw the commotion with the fat merchant, and people were talking about some strange girl who managed to heal him by _hitting_ him." She eyeballed Téana. "But the girl ran away and nobody knew who she was, or where she'd gone. Do _you_ know anything about this? Care to tell us your thoughts on _who_ this mysterious saviour could be?" Sarcasm dripped from her words like honey.

"I think everything happens for a reason," Téana said cryptically. If she hadn't frightened herself by helping that man and run away from the scene, she never would have met Ammon. However, that would have to wait until later. For now, she tugged on Maibe's arm, signalling they should all follow her.

"Hey, how come you're not wearing your wig?" Jono demanded, scratching furiously at the nape of his neck where the black hair of his own kept tickling him.

"I'll explain later."

"What kind of answer is that? It was your idea to wear these damn things in the first place. Now you're parading around without one while the rest of us suffer? You may be a seer, Téana, but you're really pushing it –"

Téana looked around and led them with unerring accuracy along the streets and in between the houses, through alleys she'd travelled with Ammon but hadn't been able to navigate herself until now. "I had a Vision."

"You did?" Seren said breathlessly. "About what?"

"It was a Vision of how we're going to live in the city without sleeping on the streets." Téana stopped in front of a wooden door and knocked.

It was opened after a long time by a thin man with a line of blood trickling from his left thumb. Beyond him, Téana could see four pegs in the floor and a length of blood-stained cloth stretched between them. The man looked shocked to see them.

"Hello," she said, bowing slightly. "Is your name Hopki, the weaver?"

"I … yes." He blinked myopically at her. "Can I help you?"

Téana smiled. "I believe we can help each other with our problems."

* * *

Mana bounced from foot to foot, humming to herself and performing little pirouettes in time with a tune only she could hear. Every so often she would kick out one foot and raise her arms, letting out a tiny cry that would have sounded a lot better if there had been a lot of people doing the same thing. It was always ridiculous trying to dance on your own _and _provide your own accompaniment, but she'd found it was one of the best ways to distract herself from unpleasant thoughts.

"Mana."

She turned with a broad grin. "Mahaad!" She jumped off the low wall and even threw out her arms as if to hug him, but pulled up short at his expression. "You look grumpy. You have little lines bunching up the top of your nose and your forehead is all crinkly." She wagged her finger. "You shouldn't do that, you know. It makes you look older than Akhnadin."

Mahaad didn't acknowledge her advice, instead replying with a question. "Have you seen the Pharaoh?"

"Atem? Ah …" She rubbed the back of her head as if adjusting her headdress. "No?"

Mahaad sighed. "If you're going to lie, at least _try_ to sound believable. Where is he this time?"

"He's not anywhere. I mean, he's _somewhere,_ obviously, but he's not, um, anywhere he's not s_upposed_ to be." She smiled winsomely. "Which means he's probably somewhere completely legitimate that you have looked yet. You should go and check in the palace. He's probably there." She didn't go as far as shooing him away, but it was close.

Something metal clanked on top of her head. Mana froze. So did Mahaad.

"What was that noise?"

"Birds."

"Birds?"

"Yep." She couldn't risk nodding, but smiled even broader. "Pesky birds. Erm … hey, have you checked the throne room? Maybe he's trying out the Big Chair to see how comfy it is. Or maybe he's just walking around the gardens. He could be picking dates and figs as we speak, and you're here yapping at me. You should go and look. Seriously. You should check one of the gardens. On the other side of the grounds."

Mahaad heaved an even deeper sigh. "Is he in the library trying to look at those forbidden scrolls again? I've told him before that the seals won't open for anyone but me -"

"No, he's not there." That, at least, was the truth. Atem hadn't shown any inclination to go near Mahaad's library in weeks. He hadn't shown any inclination to do _anything_ since his father died – he didn't want to read, didn't want to practise his fighting skills, didn't want to do anything except sit brooding or beg Mana to cover for him while he disappeared for parts unknown. Mana pasted on her brightest smile and suggested, "Why don't you try the kitchens?"

"Why would he be there?"

"You know how he is about creating his new world once he's crowned. He's probably encouraging the slaves to think about how they're not so different than the sacred court, or something."

Mahaad's stern face finally eased. He'd always had a soft spot for that particular foible of the prince's – or rather the Pharaoh's, Mana reminded herself. Though the crowning ceremony wasn't for another few days, everyone already referred to Atem as 'the new Pharaoh'. It was one of the reasons he kept ducking out of sight and getting her to pretend she didn't know where he was.

Speaking of which …

"Mahaad, could _I_ please read one of the scrolls in your library? I promise I'll be careful, and I've been practising really, really hard lately. I'm sure I could perform one of those spells, no problem."

Mahaad went from indulgent to aghast. Then he coughed into his fist, trying to cover his lapse. "When you have fully mastered the basics you can begin thinking about more complicated magic, Mana, but I have yet to be certain you _have_ control of the fundamental principles of magic."

She pouted. "I do so. I can do magic with one hand tied behind my back."

"That's exactly the kind of attitude I'm talking about. Magic isn't a game."

"I know that. I do! If you'd only let me prove it to you – wait, I know!" she snapped her fingers, muttered a string of words, and a flurry of wings heralded a flock of small birds landing on her shoulders and on her head. She giggled, twirling around without even one of them coming loose. "See?"

Mahaad wasn't convinced. "Now release them from your spell."

"Easy." She snapped her fingers. Then she snapped them again. She muttered another string of words and tried coupling the two actions together. Nothing worked. The little birds remained fastened to her, even when she tried to brush them off. Eventually she let out an impatient cry and uttered a crude dispelling charm designed to shatter enchantments rather than unravel them. Instead of the desired effect, it caused the little birds to panic. They flew into the air but turned immediately and started pecking her like she was trying to steal eggs from their nests. "Ow! Hey! Get off! Go away! Aaah!"

Mahaad's clear voice rang out. Within seconds the little birds had flown away, disoriented and wobbly, but free from Mana's magic. She rubbed the back of her head again, giggling nervously.

"Oops?"

"Now do you see why I don't trust you with the higher magics?"

"Aw, but that was just unlucky. I'm sure if I tried it again I could get it right this time -"

"Enough. I don't have time to spend gossiping with you. I have to find Atem. Akhnadin wishes to speak with him."

"I do not gossip! Old women gossip. I entertain. I enthral. I amuse."

"You talk too much and waste time. Why are you even outside? If that little display is anything to judge by, you should be indoors practising your basic enchantments."

Mana's pout nearly had her bottom lip dragging along the floor. Then she hid a giggle behind her hand. "Hey, Mahaad, you slipped up."

"Excuse me?"

"You called him 'Atem' instead of 'Pharaoh'."

Mahaad let out an exasperated noise and stalked away.

"Hey, don't worry about it!" Mana called after him. "You know he hates being called Pharaoh anyway. He'd appreciate you calling him Atem, like it's old times. Honest, he would!" She took her hands away from her mouth. "It's definitely better than half the things I'd _like_ to call him right now."

"And what things would those be?"

She whirled around with a cry. "Aiiichah! For pity's sake, Atem, warn me before you do that!"

The figure crawling out from between the feet of the stone statue made no apology. He hopped off the plinth and eased back into place the slab he had pushed aside from the inside of the hidden tunnel there. There was a click, and with that anyone who didn't already know about the tunnel would never have been able to guess its existence. It was one of many hidden entrances and exits Atem and Mana knew about, since they had spent a good portion of their childhood searching for them and piecing together clues it find their location around the palace grounds. However, until recently they had never had a need to use them. The little prince and his friend could come and go practically as they pleased, and there were much more interesting things to do and see inside the palace grounds than outside them.

Mana tapped her foot. "So where did you go this time? Somewhere specific, or just wandering? I don't know why you can't do all this brooding here instead of out there. I'm giving up valuable study time to keep watch for you."

"You, study when you're actually supposed to be studying? _Wanting _to study instead of dancing around humming to yourself? The apocalypse must be nigh."

She pulled a face. "I study. Why does everybody think I don't?"

"Because you have been learning magic for years but you are still so bad at it?"

"Watch it. You may be royalty, but I can still – hey!" she cut herself off with surprise. "You're smiling. You're making jokes. Admittedly pretty bad jokes, but still, it's a start. You haven't teased me like that since …" She trailed off.

Since his father died.

Atem had removed his distinctive royal jewellery before donning a simple rough cloak and making his getaway this morning. Whenever Mana had asked in the past, he told her he went into the city like that to remind himself that a king should be humble, and never forget he is first and foremost an instrument of the people. He said he wanted to see Egypt the way everyone else did, without people bowing and scraping as he walked by. It was odd behaviour, but Atem had never been usual. Who else had ever dreamed of a world where nobles ate at the same table as slaves?

Personally, Mana reckoned he just wanted to get away from the palace and the constant reminders (and reasons) that he was no longer just a prince. Atem understood that his father had gone on to a better existence, but the pain of no longer having him around was like a continually bleeding wound. Atem was sad and angry that his father had left before he was ready to say goodbye, and though he didn't talk about it, Mana knew he worried he wouldn't be able to measure up to his father's achievements.

Akhenamkhanen had saved Egypt from war, famine and uncertainty. He would live long in people's hearts and memories, a cornerstone of their history. His son had enormous footsteps to walk in. the thought that he would live the rest of his life in his father's shadow sometimes overwhelmed Atem. Those were the times he came to Mana to tell her which exit he was going to use and ask her to help him. She would cluck and chivvy and chide, before standing guard to make sure he came back safely. She was all for creating a bit of mischief for entertainment, but under her smile she worried that one day Atem wouldn't come back.

Now, however, those worries seemed far away. Atem's smile was small but genuine and it didn't fade. He looked … Mana regarded him thoughtfully. For the first time in weeks, Atem looked _happy_. What in the name of Ra had happened out there?

Atem, however, gave nothing away. He passed her his cloak. She fumbled in her headband for his stupidly clanking earrings. He didn't yet wear the Millennium Puzzle – that would come with the crowning ceremony – for which she was glad. Even if she had been able to touch it, there was no way even she could have hidden something that big in her wild mane of hair.

"Mahaad is getting suspicious, you know."

"I know," said Atem.

"Doesn't that worry you?"

"Not especially."

"He's scary when he's angry. I mean _really_ angry. Which he's going to be if he finds out you've been sneaking off playing peasant and risking the blade of every assassin in the city if you're discovered. Plus there are all the other priests to worry about if they find out." Mana shuddered. "I wouldn't want to have Priest Seto and Priest Kalim mad at _me_."

Atem paused. Then he did something totally unexpected. "I do appreciate you doing this for me, Mana. Thank you. I do not tell you often enough how much I value your friendship."

"I … what?" Mana was flummoxed. Where had _that_ come from? "Er, you're welcome, I guess."

Atem nodded, briefly laid a hand on her shoulder as if to cement his words, and began climbing the stone steps up into the palace.

Mana remained where she was for a minute longer, frowning in thought, before chasing after him.

She caught up when Atem paused. Standing on the top step was Isis, one of the priests of the sacred court. Mana also halted. Isis was the only woman in the court. She held a great deal of power and respect. Her Millennium Necklace showed her visions of the future and everyone knew she was probably the wisest woman in the whole of Egypt. That and her iron will, which allowed her to use the Millennium Necklace without going mad, were the reasons she had advanced into Akhenamkhanen's service at a relatively young age and staved off anyone who would have taken her place.

She stared down at Atem and Mana. "My Pharaoh," she said by way of greeting.

Mana felt Atem stiffen slightly, but his reaction was much less acute than usual. "Isis. You have something you wish to speak to me about?"

Isis continued to stare at him, as though she knew she was going to go blind tomorrow and wanted to be able to remember every detail of his face. With her, it was entirely possible. Eventually she spoke again, but in a low voice Mana had never heard before. Isis sounded almost _uncertain_. For someone who could divine the future, that was a disturbing thought. "My Necklace, Pharaoh."

"It has showed you Visions?"

"No. Exactly the opposite. My inner eye has become clouded of late. I attempted to divine your location a short while ago and couldn't detect you."

"So you came looking for me."

She nodded. "This worries me, my Pharaoh. The Millennium Necklace has never faltered before. I cannot help but think that something approaches that is causing my Visions to be taken from me."

"'Something'?" Atem echoed. "Not 'someone'?"

"I am unsure which it could be, but I wished to warn you as soon as I could."

"Your sentiment is pleasing, as is your loyalty. You should speak to Priest Akhnadin about this matter. He knows far more about the Millennium Items than I do. Perhaps he can explain why your Necklace is not working as it should."

"May it please your majesty, but perhaps it would be prudent not to admit gaps in your knowledge of the sacred court out loud, since you are its leader now."

Atem really did freeze up this time. Mana groaned inwardly. The last thing he needed was to be reminded when he screwed up. Now his good mood would be straight in the dung-heap.

"Your counsel is received and acknowledged," Atem said tightly. "Good day, Priest Isis."

Isis frowned slightly at his dismissal, but bowed her head. "As you wish, my Pharaoh." She retreated and eventually Atem and Mana continued up the steps and into the palace.

"Well that was weird," Mana remarked when Isis was out of earshot. "She seemed pretty spooked."

"I'm sure she would appreciate your concern."

Mana stuck out her tongue. Then she smiled. Isis or not, it was nice to have a little of the old Atem back. Now if she could just keep this side of him at the forefront until the crowning ceremony, things would be just dandy. After the ceremony things would get better. Atem could begin building his new world order. That would make him happy. He had been dreaming about it since he sucked poison out of Mahaad's arm when they were children and declared them brothers. Yes, things would definitely get better after the crowning ceremony.

Without Isis's Millennium Necklace unable to warn them, there was no way Mana could know just how wrong she was.

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

* * *

Ammon is a genuine Egyptian name that means 'hidden', which seemed appropriate considering Atem is masking his true identity when he uses it. Hopki, however, is based on the name 'Hopkins', since the old man we meet here is the past-life version of Professor Hopkins.


	6. Gifts and Curses

**A/N****: **It really doesn't help my any-excuse-to-turn-a-short-ficlet-into-a-novella inner author when the opening Japanese song to the Memory Arc has the lyric 'take the power of the past memory' playing when Anzu appears on screen looking angsty and pensive while holding Atem's cartouche. Half of the stuff that has ended up in this fic wasn't in my original plan, but wormed its way in after I started watching that arc in Japanese for the first time – including several of what are now MAJOR plot points. It just goes to show that research is your friend! It also makes for some giggles when 'Millennium Puzzle' is instead translated in the subtitles as 'Ancient Block'. That doesn't sound very mystical, subber-whose-first-language-is-clearly-not-English.

* * *

**6. Gifts and Curses**

* * *

_She is the one, all that I wanted,  
She is the one, and I will be haunted,  
She is the one, this gift is my curse for now._

- from _**Gifts and Curses**_by Yellowcard.

* * *

Seren used to think she would never be useful for anything. It was a tenet of her whole life – she took up space and ate food that could be better fed to those who actually did some good in the world. The idea that she could be useful was the stuff of dreams, and she'd never thought she could make those dreams a reality.

Since she was a small child, the people of her tribe had told her she was pathetic, switching to words like 'worthless' and 'of no value' when she grew old enough to learn that she could never bear children. She had always been frail, suffering from too many sicknesses as a baby and possessing a natural tendency toward ill-health. People thought she was bad luck, since nobody could survive in the harsh wilderness with a burden like her weighing them down. They told her mother she would be better drowning the sickly girl. She already had a healthy little boy, after all – what did she need a useless daughter for?

Yet her mother refused to listen. She kept Seren close and nurtured her under the disapproving gazes of her tribesmen. For a while it seemed Seren would outgrow her frailty, or at least rise above it and become a worthwhile member of the tribe. She had quick hands and a quicker mind, and though she couldn't run and jump as well as other children, she learned how to thread a necklace before any other girl, and could paint beads with intricate patterns that always sold best when the men went into towns and cities where markets were held. Many times her brother would run to their tent with stories of how the men had brought back all the things they hadn't been able to trade. No sack ever contained Seren's jewellery.

Tragedy struck when their mother died of sunsickness, thrashing and delusional in her bedroll until she sweated out her life while her children were helpless to do anything but watch. The shock took its toll; but while Jono saw their only parent's death as a reason to make himself stronger, Seren was devastated by the loss. Her health began to suffer. She lost weight. Her hands weren't as sure as they used to be. She produced only meagre jewellery of a poorer quality. People remembered how her mother had ignored their warnings, and the old resentment that Seren had proven them wrong began to simmer. With her mother gone they told Seren to her face that she would never amount to anything. She retreated further into her and, eventually, despite Jono's protests, started to believe them.

As she grew older she had to spend more and more time in the tent she shared with her brother. She didn't venture out in case one of the Elders ordered her back where nobody could see her. After Elder Goza went into such a tirade that his heart gave him pains, Seren stopped going out entirely except for when they mopved camp. She was an embarrassment. No other tribe ever had such sickly children on show. They kept her hidden because Jono refused to let them make her leave and Jono was quickly becoming a prize they couldn't afford to lose.

Seren made bits of jewellery and repaired the clothes her brother wore out or tore during his training, but her confidence suffered from the minimal human contact and it showed in her work. Where once she had picked out stones from the trail as they travelled, polishing them up and painting exotic amulets from the Storyteller's tales, she now painted dark swirls and bleak patterns that were beautiful in their own way, but radiated so much sadness that nobody ever wanted to trade for them.

Lack of exercise just made her weaker, until everyone but a select few declared her a drain on their resources and talked openly about casting her out into the desert. Times were hard, they said. It was the kindest thing to do. Why let her live a life where she knew she was worthless when a quick death would solve all their problems. The wilderness would kill her inside a day and her body could feed the beasts and keep them away from raiding the camp. She would be much more useful that way than eating their food and taking up space. Seren would sit close to the tent flap, listening to them discuss her future like she was a sack of rotten grain, and try her best not to cry and wish for her mother.

Her encroaching blindness was the last straw. Poor, useless, worthless Seren's days in the tribe were numbered when Otogi the Seer prophesied her sight would be completely gone by the next full moon. It was only through her brother's quick thinking and sacrifices, plus the help of Maibe and Otog's apprentice, Téana, that Seren was still alive at all. She had resigned herself to her fate before Jono smuggled her out of the camp one night, and half expected to die on the journey into the desert. After all, she was useless, wasn't she? What hope did she have of surviving in a situation like that? What _right_ did she have to make her brother give up so much for her sake?

It seemed impossible to her then that she could ever be happy again, much less living a new and wonderful life in the pharaoh's city, deep in the heart of Egypt.

"Look, Jono! Look how much I wove today!"

Jono looked at the half-finished reed basket his sister waved at him. "That's fantastic, Seren." His proud smile was nearly as dazzling as hers. "Really fantastic."

Happily, Seren settled down to finish what she had started. Across from her, an old man with white hair shook his head and smiled with a mixture of happiness and bemusement. "You have a natural talent, my dear."

"I didn't think I'd ever be able to do anything like this," she confessed. "My eyes, you see. But it's like you said – it's not about seeing at all, it's about _feeling_ where each strand should go."

Hopki nodded. He was nearly blind himself with age, but had long since developed ways of making his living in spite of it. He wasn't quick, but he was meticulous and had years of experience. Everyone knew that if you wanted a basket made fast, you could go anywhere, but if you wanted one that would _last_ you went to Hopki. In his youth he had been the most famous and talented weaver and basket-maker in the whole city, but as he got older it had fallen more and more to his daughter, and then this granddaughter, to help him keep up with demand. When Seren's group arrived on his doorstep he had been nearly falling over with fatigue, trying to compensate for the sudden tragic loss of his family by taking on their workload as well as his own.

"I still find it hard to believe," he had said more than once, "that you were guided to me when I most needed help. Truly, the gods smiled on me when they sent you to my door."

Téana didn't answer, but Seren had gotten to know her on their trek through the wilderness. She knew Téana was thinking it hadn't been anything to do with the gods. The Great Spirits, maybe, but not the gods and goddesses Hopki prayed to. Téana's second sight was both a gift and a curse from the Great Spirits who ruled over the sky, desert and great Nile River. It was only through her Visions that they had known to go to Hopki.

Hopki hadn't judged them or asked more questions than they wanted to answer. Instead, he had welcomed them into his home when he realised how their need for shelter coincided with his need for help and companionship. Téana's Vision had told her he was someone who could be trusted with their true identities, and that their honesty with him would be rewarded tenfold – though Jono was more reluctant to tell Hopki who they were in case it somehow got back to the people chasing them.

"Shouldn't you, um, be more worried that we're thieves or murderers or something?" Jono had asked when Hopki first took them in, not entirely trusting the old man's generosity. He had kept his hand on Seren's shoulder the whole time Hopki and Téana were talking, and dug his fingers in a little too firmly when Hopki came across to inspect the rest of them. "You're being very trusting, considering you don't know us. We could be lying to you."

Téana had thrown him a murderous look, but Hopki had just smiled and shaken his head.

"I know that you're the first people to speak to me since my daughter and my granddaughter died. I know that if you'd intended to kill me you could have done it already. I know that I have nothing worth stealing, and I can tell you're telling the truth when you say you need sanctuary, and that you're willing to trade your time and skills for it. I'm an old man. I need all the help I can get."

"How? How can you possibly tell all that? Are you a seer?"

"No, but with age comes wisdom. It makes up for the bad back and aching feet."

Hopki had taken to Seren immediately, perhaps seeing some of his lost granddaughter in her thin shoulders and eagerness to learn. Seren latched on to anyone who showed her kindness. She was already devoted to her brother. In the last few weeks, since they risked life and limb getting her out of camp, that devotion had spilled into her feelings for Maibe and Téana too. They had escaped with her across the mountains so they could hide their trail from their pursuers in the great city, and somehow done the impossible by finding a place to stay and means of making a living while they waited for the season to change and those pursuers to return to the tribe without them. Every morning Seren woke up with genuine surprise that it hadn't all been a wonderful dream.

"I can't thank you enough," she had said to all of them more times than she could count. "If it weren't for you …"

"Hey, don't worry about it," Maibe always replied. "You really think I was going to let those old farts toss you into the desert to die? If anyone deserves to be left like that, it's those three Elders for thinking a woman's worth is only measured by how many children she can squirt out."

Maibe was always saying things like that. It made Seren uncomfortable a little wary. A wife and mother was the highest accolade a woman could achieve. Maibe was such a strong person, however, that even with her strange ideas Seren admired her.

Téana, on the other hand, often replied to Seren's gratefulness with a hug that cut off her words and made Seren just savour being touched. "You're more valuable than they ever gave you credit for, Seren. Never, ever listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. I don't think I could have lived your life and stayed as positive as you have."

"I'm just happy I have you, Maibe, and my big brother."

And now she had Hopki, too, who kept giving her little treats and talking to her like she was an equal, not just some half-blind nomad barbarian who'd blown in from the desert on the wind.

Seren's fingers slid over the reeds, finding tiny holes in the weaving thorugh which to pass each tip. Her very first basket was turning out to be quite good. After it was finished, she decided, she'd ask Hopki if she could keep it. He could sell every other basket she ever made, but she wanted to keep this one; the first thing in her new life that she had made with her own two hands. Despite her best efforts, since her eyes began to fail she had become awful at threading necklaces or making jewellery. The satisfaction of finally finding something she was good at was like a rainstorm after a drought.

Jono continued to try with his own basket. It wasn't work meant for a young man, much less a young warrior, but they all had to keep a low profile. He had decided to stay close to his sister and try his hand at basket-making too. Unfortunately, he was much less talented. A thin strip of dried, hardened reeds slipped from his grasp and thwacked him across his face. He yelped and clutched his nose, swearing.

"Oh, stop being such a baby," Maibe reprimanded. She was working at the cloth stretched between four pegs in the floor. Like Seren and her basket, Maibe had proved a dab hand at cloth-making. Strong muscles from living in the wilderness helped her kneel and work tirelessly with the thick thread, turning it from coarse fibres into beautiful cloth. "Honestly, all the fuss you make. Anybody would think you'd been stabbed."

"It hurt!"

"Poor baby. Did the mighty warrior get attacked by the even mightier basket?"

Jono pouted, picked up his basket and fought on defiantly.

Seren giggled. "Where's Téana?"

"I don't know," he said grumpily. "Probably trying to divine the future from a camel turd or something."

With Téana that wasn't idle joking, but Seren said nothing. The red welt on her brother's face made her fogive his crankiness even faster than usaual.

They had lived with Hopki for almost a week now. While Maibe, Seren and Jono had settled into this life as best they could, Téana hadn't been able to do the same. She was on edge all the time. Her shoulders stayed hunched nearly to her ears and she slept badly. Though Seren had trouble reading the finer details of facial expressions, she was better than most at reading voices and could pick out in Téana's tone how worried she was. Téana had tried basket-weaving and cloth-making, and wasn't bad at either, but her mind strayed too much and she often became unfocussed, making mistakes that took twice as long to go back and fix. It was as though her spirit had momentarily left her body. If Hopki hadn't already known she was a seer he would have guessed something was strange by the way she acted.

Last night she had taken a stick of wood and a flint, sat on the flat roof of Hopki's house and stared at the flaming tip until it burnt her fingers. She had jumped when Seren asked what she was doing, since she'd thought she was alone up there.

"Otog used to see things in the campfire," she had explained. "I thought maybe I could do it too." She had looked down at her sore fingers and muttered an oath that surely came from too much time around Jono. Seren could ever remembering hearing Téana curse like that before they ran away.

"Don't worry," Seren had said, reaching to find Téana's shoulder so she could give her a comforting hug. "Nobody expects you to be as good as Otog. He had years to learn how to use his gifts. I'm sure you'll master yours with time."

"But we don't _have_ time. We need to know where Usi, Hondo and Makalani are _now_. It's possible they're still looking for us in the wilderness, but if they've somehow managed to track us to the city we need to know about it. I haven't had any Visions since the one that brought us to Hopki. I've tried to force them but … and … argh!" She'd trailed off with a frustrated noise and scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I'm sorry, Seren, I don't mean to worry you, but I can't help feeling like I'm failing somehow. I'm supposed to be the one keeping us safe and one step ahead of Usi's party."

"But you've already done so much for us. We can't expect any more than that. We can't rely on you when you're already doing your best. We have to do our part, too."

Téana had looked at her strangely then. Seren's eyesight wasn't good enough to make out the emotions behind her eyes, but she heard the note of gratefulness in the other girl's voice. "You know, that's the first time I've felt like anybody really means it when they say they're not relying on my powers to solve everything."

Seren had blushed. Later, when they retired to bed, she had curled up and thought how wonderful it was to have people who treated her like her opinions _meant_ something.

Now she sat on the low stool, her mostly-finished basket in her lap, and wondered whether Téana was once more hiding away trying to force her second sight to show her things.

Hopki solved the mystery. "I sent her to the market to fetch some dye for the cloth. It's to be a tribute to the Pharaoh for his crowning ceremony. All merchants have to pay homage to our new king with the best of our wares."

"Oh." Seren brushed her fingertips over her basket. Everyone kept saying how they had to fit in here in the city. "I'll give him my first basket, then."

"It would be a great honour for anyone to have your first basket, Bekah."

Seren pretended not to notice he called her by his dead granddaughter's name. He did that sometimes. They overlooked it because he'd been so generous and he usually corrected himself anyway. If one of the reasons he was allowing them to live with him was because Seren allowed him to pretend he hadn't lost his family, then it was a small price to pay.

"I hope she comes back soon," muttered Jono. "I don't like it when we're separated for too long."

"I gave her a headscarf to cover her hair," said Hopki. "And now she wears kohl and the clothes of a proper Egyptian, it should be more difficult for even those who know her to recognise her."

"Hmmf." Jono didn't sound convinced. "I hope you're right."

* * *

Even though it was a dangerous place, Téana enjoyed the sights and smells of the market. After being cooped up in Hopki's house it was refreshing to experience the hustle and bustle of trade. She liked being near people who laughed and talked openly; people who didn't have three armed warriors trying to drag them back into the wilderness.

_Which, of course, they don't. Obviously. _

She sighed and drew her arms tighter over the small clay pot of dye. Much as she would have liked to stay, she knew she had to get back. Not only was it safer not to be outdoors while the threat of Usi, Hondo and Makalani was still fresh, Jono and the others would be worried.

It was extraordinary how she, Jono, Maibe and Seren had become so close so quickly. In the tribe Téana had viewed them with detachment, more concerned with her own problems until the pale stranger wandered into camp and changed how she looked at the world. How could she have gone so long without realising how much they had to give? Even Seren – no, _especially_ Seren – had affected changes not even Téana's second sight could have predicted. Maibe had planted ideas she never would have thought of on her own. As for Jono; he was hot-headed and could be crude, but his devotion to those he cared about was breathtaking. She could do far worse than model that part of herself on him.

A stab of guilt went through her. Jono would never keep secrets from rest of the group, especially not for selfish reasons.

Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned without thinking, let out a small gasp and nearly dropped the pot. It was as if her thoughts had come to life and snuck up behind her.

"Ammon!"

Ammon's smile was just visible beneath his deep hood. He wore the same loose-fitting robes as the last time she had seen him. Since then he had often strayed into her thoughts, though she hadn't mentioned him to the others. She knew Jono would be angry that she had revealed so much to someone whose trustworthiness no Vision had endorsed. Yet part of Téana didn't want to share Ammon's existence. It was an inexplicable, selfish impulse, but he felt like a glorious secret; something special and just for her. She couldn't understand why she felt that way, or why knowing it was foolish and selfish failed to stop her keeping her mouth shut.

She felt like she had swallowed a bat that was flapping around inside her stomach. Trying and failing to force the feeling away, Téana opted for a small smile of her own.

"I told you I would find you again, Téana of the Black Dragons," he said in that rich, oddly formal voice that had haunted her dreams instead of more useful Visions.

"Hush!" she said, suddenly anxious. "Please don't mention that while we're in public."

"Ah, I apologise. You are still in disguise – although this one suits you far more than your last attempt."

Her cheeks heated. "Yes, well, I had help this time."

"You did? From whom?"

She looked around. Suddenly the people she had enjoyed being near seemed nothing more than giant ears with legs. "If you'll walk with me, I'll tell you as we go."

He nodded. "I will gladly walk with you. Come, we shall find somewhere we can speak freely, away from all these ears."

….

"So, did you just hang around the market until I finally showed up?"

"Such impudence," Ammon said, but there was little fierceness to his words. "I do not go to the market as often as I would like. I did, however, hope that I would find you there today."

"Today's the first time I've been back since the last time we met," Téana admitted. "It's a real coincidence that you'd be there, and at the right moment too. The Great Spirits must have decided to bless me." _For once._

"I'm not sure about your Great Spirits, but the gods certainly smiled when they arranged for you to be there on the very morning I managed to make my escape."

"Escape?" Téana looked sideways at him. His expression had darkened. Obviously he hadn't meant to say that. "You mean you're not meant to be here? Why? Who'd miss you?" It was impertinent, but she wanted to know more about him. She had already told him so much about herself, after all.

Ammon seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he sighed. "I have demands made on my time by many people for many reasons. At this moment I am meant to be practising my writing skills. Instead, I am here talking to you."

"You're a scribe?" She supposed he must be an apprentice, since he had said 'practising'. He wasn't much older than her and it took years to train to be a scribe. Even in the desert she had heard about how only a select few Egyptian children were able to rise to that level, and that it was a long and arduous road that taxed the mind almost to breaking. That would certainly explain a few things – like why Ammon was obviously educated and why he kept himself covered up. He was as much in disguise as her.

Ammon mulled over her question. "I am training in the skills of a scribe. I know how to read common and formal Egyptian and I am well-practised in hieroglyphs."

"I'm not." Téana shrugged. "You have my respect. I've seen things written down since I came to the city and I can't understand any of it. There wasn't much need to learn reading or writing where I'm from, and certainly not for a girl-child."

"But what of your history? How else so you tell future generations of your triumphs and achievements?"

"We had Storytellers. Everything about our history was taught by one Storyteller to the next. They keep everything in their memories. We'd often spend long evenings gathered around campfires, listening to the Storyteller teach us about how our ancestors learned how to survive in the desert, or why our tribe was the strongest and more fearsome of all the wandering people."

"Memories fade," Ammon said disapprovingly. "Stories alter with every teller and every retelling. How can you know that the stories you heard are what actually happened?"

"I suppose it's a matter of trust."

"Telling bedtime stories cannot be as accurate as our written history."

"Well how can you tell what's written down wasn't embellished to make your ancestors sound better than they were? They aren't around for you to ask, are they? "

"Egypt's past glories are imprinted. No matter the voice or the eyes that read them, the words never change."

"But history's always written by those who survive it. Who's to say that those who survived didn't leave out the things that sounded less glorious, or made them sound less deserving, or even _embarrassing _stuff? Who'd know, after all? You just trust it's the truth because that's all you can do, just like we do with our Storytellers."

Ammon levelled a look at her that could have been a glare. "You are doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Offending me, my country, my gods and my customs. I think was how you put it last time, was it not?"

Téana's heart sank. "I didn't mean to. I was just … talking." And not thinking – at _all_. At that moment she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her, or a raging horde of wild bees to sweep through the city as a distraction while she ran away.

Ammon continued to glare. Abruptly, it vanished and he started to laugh.

"You're … mocking me!" Téana realised.

"I apologise. Although, if I were a zealot, you would already have been arrested and quartered by now."

"Really?"

"Egypt is proud of its history. To insult it is to insult its people and everything they value. They would take it as a personal affront if you implied that their ancestors were not the celebrated champions they believe them to be."

"And you?"

"I am possibly one of the only people who would not be insulted by your words. As I have said, I believe in the new Pharaoh's vision of a future in which everyone is valued in the same way and able to speak their own minds as equals. I am more open-minded than many of my peers."

"Which is why you're talking to a barbarian like me in the first place."

His gaze flicked to her face. "I would not describe you as that now that I know you. A barbarian is a beast with a body of nothing but brute strength with no integrity or decency to guide it. That is not you, Téana of the Black Dragons."

"Um, you don't have to keep adding that to my name," Téana said, embarrassed. "And, um … thank you, but, um …" She trailed off. "I'm sorry. For what I said, I mean. About your history and writing it down. I do admire people who can read and write. It looks so complicated. It must be difficult to remember what all those different symbols mean. I wouldn't even know how to write my own name." She laughed, trying to alleviate the tightness in her chest. It felt like trying to catch your breath while the wind kept whipping it away during a sandstorm.

"Would you like to?" Ammon asked.

"What?"

"Would you like to learn how to write your name?"

"I … um …" Why not? What could it hurt? "Well … yes please, if you're offering to teach me." Jono and the others could wait a few more minutes. She would just tell them the dye merchant had been awkward and kept her longer at his stall than they had anticipated.

She and Ammon were walking along a side-street. He looked around and went over to a patch of ground covered in loose sand. He smoothed it with one sandal and crouched, gesturing for her to crouch beside him.

"Téana," he murmured, sounding out each syllable as he drew things in the dirt with his index finger. "Tay-ah-nah. There. That is your name, Téana."

Téana peered at the series of images – a semi-circle like the rising sun, a feather standing on its end, a bird with folded wings, a jagged horizontal line and another bird. Her mind could make no connection between these and the individual sounds that made up her name. They were just too disparate to ever be connected for her the way they obviously were for Ammon.

"Now you try," he said.

"Me? I couldn't."

"Just copy what I have drawn." It wasn't a request. There was something about the way he said it that gave the impression he wasn't used to being disobeyed. Téana supposed the household of a scribe would have lotds of servants ready to do their master's bidding and that of an apprentice scribe as well.

Still, she wasn't any slave or servant. Ammon wasn't the only one who could pretend offence at having his customs slighted. "Where I come from, you say 'please' when you want someone to do something."

"You're in the city now, not the wilderness."

"So manners are unfashionable here?"

Ammon blinked at her. Then another small tugged at his mouth. He not only understood her, but was willing to play along. "If it would please you, _please_ copy what I have drawn."

"Thank you. It'd please me very much." Téana scratched out a wobbly facsimile of the symbols with her fingertip. "There. How's that?"

"Terrible. My tutor would shout if he saw such poor workmanship."

Téana blushed and bristled at the same time, which was an odd sensation. Ammon was good at making her feel conflicting emotions in such close succession that she didn't know whether she was a person with feelings or a ball of feelings with a person attached.

"But I am not my tutor," Ammon went on without stopping, "and I think that for a first attempt you did very well."

The bristling faded, leaving only the blushing. Téana dipped her head, wishing her headscarf could hide her face the way her hair usually would when she bent her neck forward.

"You have a very pretty name," said Ammon. "I have never heard it before."

"In my tribe it means 'Follower of the Great Spirits'."

"Then perhaps you were destined for them to bless you from the beginning."

"Perhaps."

"You do not sound convinced."

"Sometimes I think my 'gifts' aren't much of a blessing at all. Since I escaped I've been wondering whether the Great Spirits have just been punishing me over and over for something I did wrong. I can't think what it was, though. Before all of this I was a dutiful little thing who never broke any rules."

"Well I, for one, am grateful that you decided to change and start breaking them." Ammon coughed into his fist and stood up quickly – too quickly, it seemed, as he wobbled and had to brace his hand against the wall.

Téana stood as well, tucking the pot of dye in the crook of one arm and reaching out to grab his elbow with the other. "Are you all right?"

Ammon shook her off. He stopped in surprise, looked down at his arm and then up at her face. "Nobody … to touch me," he mumbled, some of his words inaudible.

"What?" Téana leaned forward. "I asked if you were all right."

"I'm fine," he snapped tersely.

She was stung. "Oh. Well." She stepped away from him. "I should be getting back." The playful mood had been broken.

"To the old man who has taken you in?"

"I … yes."

"The one your Vision showed you is trustworthy enough not to sell your secrets to the highest bidder?"

"Yes."

Ammon narrowed his eyes. "Are you certain of that?"

"My Visions have never been wrong before," she said defensively. She may not always understand or like them, but each thing her second sight told her was absolute truth. She had never had any reason to doubt that and she wasn't about to start now. Her situation, and that of her friends, was precarious enough without unnecessary doubts.

Ammon nodded once. "Good. I would not like to think that that sort of harm would come to you while I am not around to prevent it."

She stared at him. "Wh-what?"

Ammon seemed to realise the implications of what he had said. He coughed into his fist again. "You, uh, may not be educated, and you may have all the social graces of a camel in make-up, but you have a quick mind and it would be a waste for it to be banished back to the wilderness."

"Was that a compliment?"

He grunted. "Do you … do you think _I_ am trustworthy, Téana?" It was the first time she had ever heard him sound hesitant.

Téana bit down on the question like it was a piece of tough meat, chewing it over before replying. "I do."

"Did a Vision tell you this?"

"No."

Ammon stared at her. He had a very penetrating stare. Téana felt like all her half-truths, omissions and secret, selfish thoughts were being sifted through. He would know everything about her if he just stared at her long enough. She shifted uncomfortably.

"I see," Ammon said in a tone she couldn't decipher. "For someone with so much at stake, you are very trusting, Téana."

_You have no idea_. "It's always good to have faith."

"Yes. You said as much the last time we spoke. Odd that someone with such a cynical view on the nature of humanity would still have such faith in it when it comes to placing herself, her safety and her dreams for the future in its hands."

"I never said –" Téana broke off. Sounds of a commotion came from the street beyond the line of houses. Someone was shouting, but she couldn't see what was going on.

Ammon, however, reacted immediately. "I believe it is time for us to part ways again."

"Is that your tutor looking for you?"

"No, but it will not be long before that is the case. He may be drawn by the disturbance, therefore I must bid you goodbye." He made a short bow at the waist, but followed it something unexpected. He stepped forward and took Téana's free hand in both of his own.

His hands were dry, the skin slightly roughened, but not as much as that of the goatherds or the warriors in her tribe. When Jono first began his training he was presented with a shaft of untreated wood to make into his own spear. Every day he had to grip and twist his hands around it smooth it down and also to create calluses on his palms to toughen his skin. Ammon's hand felt nothing like that, but his skin wasn't delicate either. She suspected he knew how to ride and the roughness came from holding reins; or maybe using writing equipment was more demanding than she had ever imagined.

"Téana, do you trust me enough to tell me where you are staying?"

"Wh-why would you want to know that?" Why was she stammering? She forced her throat to stop quivering. The touch of Ammon's hands was doing strange things to her insides.

"I … would like to see you again," he said, almost uncertainly.

"A third time?"

"Yes."

"You don't sound like you do."

"This is … not something I do very often. I will admit that I have doubts about what I am asking; but this is hardly a normal situation, is it? As soon as the danger of your pursuers has passed you will leave the city, will you not?"

Téana opened her mouth to reply but paused. That had been the plan, after all. After Usi, Hondo and Makalani were no longer an issue she, Maibe, Seren and Jono had planned to go back to the desert where they were more comfortable. They were wanderers, not city folk. Plus Egyptian customs were so strange – and _dangerous_ if you got them wrong.

Yet standing beside the patch of dirt with her name written in it, Ammon holding her hand and looking at her so intently, the thought of leaving and never coming back seemed as awful as going back to the tribe and asking them to keep her chained by her ankle to her tent pole forever.

_This is ridiculous_, she thought angrily. _You barely know him. You're acting like a fool. It's not like you've been promised to him, or him to you. You shouldn't even be alone with him! What are you thinking, acting so shamelessly? Besides, even if you didn't have Jono, Maibe and Seren depending on you to keep them safe, Ammon's an Egyptian; and a high-ranking one too. You're just a nobody in his world; a 'barbarian nomad' who doesn't even know how to write her own name –_

"Téana?"

She bit her lip. She couldn't tell him where Hopki's house was. She _couldn't. _ If he came to see her and saw Maibe, Jono and Seren – or if they saw _him_ – the truth would come out and they would all know she had lied. It would be messy even if they realised why she had done it, especially when she talked so much about trust and having faith in people …

"Will you leave?" Ammon prompted.

"Maybe," she settled for. "If I thought it would be safer for me to keep travelling rather than stay in one place for too long."

"So if you felt safe here you would stay?"

"I … I don't know."

His shoulders sagged. The movement was so small it barely stirred his cloak, but ti was there. If she hadn't been so attuned to him at that moment she probably wouldn't even haven noticed. He straightened. "But if you do decide to leave, then in the meantime I must make the most of your company while I still have the opportunity to do so."

The shouting grew louder. Whoever was doing it was getting closer. Ammon's grip grew tighter still. Téana's fingers actually started to hurt under the pressure.

"I must go. I hope …" But whatever he was about to say was lostin a grunt of apparent frustration. He released her hand and retreated down a nearby alley.

Téana remained where she was, not sure if she was pleased or upset that he hadn't pressed her to tell him where she was living so he actually _could_ see her again. Her eyes fell to the floor and she smiled.

Even though it meant he had been forced to jump further than was comfortable, Ammon hadn't stepped on her name.

.

* * *

_To Be Continued ..._

* * *

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	7. The First Signs of Losing Control

**A/N: **Regarding 'Maibe' I've always mentally pronounced it 'Mai-buh', but according to babynamespedia (dot) com (slash) meaning (slash) Maibeit's actually pronounced 'Meyb'. Go figure.

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**7. The First Signs of Losing Control**

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_Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you I had no control over. _– Anonymous.

* * *

"Téana!" Seren greeted her with such open delight that Téana's mood immediately lifted. "We were worried! Jono said you must've fallen into an open latrine pit and drowned."

"Oh he did, did he?"

Behind Seren, Jono scrubbed at the back of his head. "I, uh, might've said something like that. But you didn't and you're back now, even if you did take forever. Did you do what you were supposed to?"

"Of course." Téana handed the dye she had bought to Hopki.

"It's for the tribute to the new Pharaoh," Seren babbled. "Everyone has to give one. I'm giving him my new basket. Would you like to see it? Hopki says it's the best he's ever seen from a beginner. I hope the Pharaoh likes it too. What do you think he'll keep in it? It's not completely waterproof, but you could still put fish in it or things like that. Or maybe he could keep linen in it – only I suppose he has people who take care of that sort of thing for him. I'd be happy even if the Pharaoh's servants used my basket, as long as it was useful to someone." She hardly paused for breath. Téana barely recognised her as the mousy little thing who used to cower in her tent and rely on Jono for everything.

"Téana," Maibe came up to them. "Could you come and taste this for me? Seren, clear away your things now. Jono, you can help with this since you made so much mess with that eyesore you call a basket."

"Hey!" he protested.

"Are you telling me that thing _isn't_ an eyesore?"

Téana chuckled and went with Maibe to the dome-shaped clay oven where a fire crackled and slowly baked several round bread rolls. On a flat surface nearby Maibe had made small twists of mashed dates, cinnamon, almonds and walnuts stuck together with honey. She broke one in half and handed it to Téana, who bit in and groaned at the wonderful taste. She hadn't realised how hungry she was and greedily finished it in three bites.

"Good?" Maibe asked.

"Wonderful; but why do I get the feeling you didn't actually want my opinion on your cooking?"

Maibe laughed and bit into the other half of the twist. She knew she was a good cook. It was why she always ended up taking care of the food. "You had a very odd look on your face when you came in. I thought you might appreciate the privacy to talk about it. You keep too many of your worries inside. It's not healthy."

Téana hesitated. Maibe was a straight-talker with a lot of common sense. Téana respected her opinion. If anyone could offer practical advice in a situation as odd as this, it was Maibe.

"I was … talking to a scribe at the market," she admitted.

"Oh?"

"Well, not a full scribe. An apprentice. Someone about my age who's studying to be a scribe someday."

"I know what an apprentice is. And this caused you to look like you'd been kicked in the head by a camel?"

"Yes. No. Not quite." Téana sighed. "It's complicated. More complicated than it should be."

Maibe regarded her critically. "Was this scribe male or female?"

"Male."

"First meeting?"

"Second. He was the person I talked to the day we arrived – you remember when I went looking for food and didn't come back for ages?"

"Oh, I remember. Jono was all in favour of looking for you with his spear _and_ his sword out. He was practically climbing the walls until you came back. Seren and I had to hold him down to make him stay where you'd agreed to meet us. I wasn't too pleased with you either, until you said you'd been trading for information that could help us hide without being detected."

"I did say that, didn't I? Well, I didn't exactly … _trade_ for that information. Ammon gave it freely, once he figured out I wasn't an assassin sent to murder the new Pharaoh or a street thief out to rob people. But … I had to tell him some things about myself first to convince him. And I … didn't lie."

"How many things?" Maibe asked warily.

"I never mentioned you, Jono or Seren, but … pretty much everything else."

Maibe didn't fly into a rage the way Jono would have. Her face was unreadable, however. "And you saw him again today?"

"Yes."

"Had he told anyone what you told him?"

"He swore he didn't."

"And you believe him?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Téana shrugged uncomfortably. "It was nearly a week ago and nothing's happened to us since then. He seems … trustworthy. Honourable." She lowered her voice. "Nice."

Maibe popped the last part of the honey twist into her mouth, chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. "You took a huge risk."

"You have to believe me when I say it couldn't be helped. Well, not the first time." She decided not to mention the part where Ammon had held a knife to her throat. If she was trying to give Maibe a good impression of him, information like that wouldn't help.

"Which means it wasn't the second time. Téana, I'll be frank. Judging by your expression and not only what you just told me, but the _way_ you told me, I can guess some of what you're thinking about this scribe boy. I'm not an idiot and neither are you, so you have to know we can't afford to think about _anyone _like that. For one thing we may not be here after the moon waxes full and you'll probably never see him again if we leave the city. For another, a scribe is usually someone of noble birth. He'd never take a wanderer for his wife. If he's given you any encouragement but _doesn't_ intend to marry you, he's only interested in using you for … other reasons." She loaded her words with extra meaning that reminded Téana of an elder tribeswoman's explanations of womanhood, monthly cycles and where babies come from.

"Ammon's not like that!" Téana said vehemently.

Maibe levelled a look at her. "How do you know?"

"I just … I just know!"

"Did your gifts tell you?"

"No, I just know he'd not like …" Téana searched for the worst person she could think of; Ammon's total opposite. The answer was blindingly obvious. "Ammon isn't anything like _Usi_."

Yet Maibe remained unconvinced. "That's not good enough. Remember, you're not just gambling with your own life, you're gambling with ours. Think about Seren and Jono. What would it do to them if you took a chance on this Ammon character and something bad happened to you? And I don't just mean the loss of your gifts. We're not like the Elders; we don't only think about you in terms of what you can do for us. I mean what would it do to them – and me – if this boy hurt you. Or worse."

"I know. I _know_. Why else do you think I looked like – how did you put it?"

Maibe smirked. "Like you'd been kicked in the head by a camel."

"This is one complication I _did not_ need. But Maibe, I can't … I've never been like this with anyone before. I don't know how to deal with … I just can't stop _thinking_ about him. I've only met him twice, but he keeps running around my thoughts like a goat tied to a pole. I know it doesn't make any sense, and it's wrong, but I still …" Her hands clenched and unclenched. "I don't know what to do," she said in a small voice. "My inner eye doesn't help. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I should be concentrating on Usi's hunting party, fitting in here, preparing Seren for when she loses her sight, helping Jono to cope with that too, plus a hundred and one other things, but my thoughts keep going back to Ammon. I've never had to deal with this sort of thing before. I've never _felt_ like this before. You know how it was in the tribe."

Maibe nodded. In age-old tradition, the Elders picked out a suitable husband for every girl who reaching childbearing age. Usually they chose young men who had proven themselves in the Warrior Test, or older warriors who had lost their wives to childbirth, disease, animal attack or raiders from other tribes. That way they ensured that the next generation would be full of equally skilled boys to keep the tribe strong. People rarely chose their own partners. If they did it was just a happy coincidence that what who they wanted was also what the Elders decreed. Accordingly, nobody really thought about love and happiness within marriage. It was all about which pairs could produce the strongest, healthiest babies, not making each other happy.

Maibe's eyes flicked to the door Jono and Seren had gone through. Téana noticed but didn't say anything. If they were recaptured by Usi, Hondo and Makalani, Maibe would probably be given to one of them as their wife. For someone who had declared she didn't want to marry anyone, it would be like a prison sentence. She would no doubt be punished in other ways as well: ritual scarring to mark her as tainted; the removal of her tongue so she couldn't talk back anymore; her toes and heels would be crushed so she couldn't run away again; these were only some of the ways the tribe had punished wayward women in the past. Even without the disfigurements, Maibe's independent spirit would chafe against a husband, but he would be allowed to punish any rebellion from her with force beyond what was usually permissible. Nobody would defend her, even if he chose to beat her near to death. Eventually the fire that burned so brightly in her would wither and die – or she would. Téana didn't need to see the future to know Maibe would become a husk of her former self. The thoughts only added to her confusion about Ammon. There was so much at risk if her faith in him proved wrong.

"Things are different in this city," she said, averting her eyes from Maibe's. "I don't know how it's supposed to go – courting and marriage and whatever. I've already been wrong about some of the customs and how they live here. I can't pretend like I know anything about their courtship rituals and how they compare to the tribe's. I just know that I … like Ammon. A lot."

"After only meeting him twice?"

"I know it sounds foolish but … there is no but. It sounds foolish because it _is _foolish. _I _sound foolish because I'm foolish_. _This whole thing is , what am I supposed to do?"

"About what?" Jono chose that moment to reappear. "Hey, Maibe, I think the bread's burning."

Maibe cursed and was immediately distracted. Seren and Hopki arrived after Jono, putting an end to the conversation until after everyone was finished eating.

Afterwards, Maibe drew Téana to one side where the others couldn't hear them. "I'm not sure what you want me to say about … what we were talking about before," she murmured.

"I want you to tell me what I should do."

Maibe shook her head. "I can't do that. I was thinking about it while we were eating. I said it was useless for you to think about this Ammon boy as anything more than an acquaintance. To be honest, even counting him as a friend is risky. But your eyes and the way you talk tell me I've missed the caravan if I tell you not to let yourself think of him that way. So, after consideration, I can tell you this much: this is a new life for all of us, Téana. We aren't bound by the rules of the tribe anymore. The Elders aren't here to make decisions for you and nobody else can either. You have to learn to use your own mind, not just your inner eye. No, don't look at me that way. You spend so much time examining what you see with your second sight that you don't appreciate what your _first_ sight is telling you."

"Because I don't understand _either_ of them."

"I think you do. I think you understand perfectly, you just don't like it that it scares you. That's natural. But be careful about measuring the depth of your feelings. Don't mistake what might be infatuation for something else. Remember, until Usi's party is taken care of we're all living on eggshells. Being away from the tribe means we can't count on anything being permanent like we used to. Everything could change in a heartbeat. Make of that what you will, but you need to ask yourself how much you really know about Ammon. I'm an advocate of a woman being able to make her own choices and not be bound by just the roles she's always held just because she's always held them, and I like what I've heard about the court here in the city – why shouldn't a woman be a scribe, or a priest, or anything else she wants to be? A woman who knows her own mind and heart should be allowed to use them to make her own path in life. Just be aware that there's more at stake than just you and your feelings, Téana, however confusing or clear they are."

"Definitely confusing," said Téana. "So what are you saying? That I should stay away from Ammon and try to forget about him in case he endangers us all?"

"That's not what I said. I'm telling you that you should make your own decisions, but they should be _informed_ decisions. I trust your judgment. Jono and Seren do, too. You're more than just our guide, Téana, you're our friend. You shouldn't call yourself foolish; you're _not _a fool. Whatever you decide to do, we'll support you in whatever way we can. That's what friends do."

Téana's eyes filled with tears. "Thank you, Maibe."

"Don't cry. You'll make your kohl run and it was a pain to put on you since you wriggle so much when anything touches your eyelids."

A tiny laugh bubbled up in her throat. "Do you think it's even possible to feel so attached to someone after only two meetings and it's _not_ just infatuation?"

"That depends on what you mean by 'attached'."

"I mean … I mean …" Téana fumbled for words she had no idea how to summon, or even recognise if they did come to her. "I mean … attached."

"Perhaps that's the question you should answer before any others." Maibe withdrew, leaving Téana to consider her thoughts and feelings on her own.

* * *

"I told you, one of these days you're going to get caught."

Atem irritably waved Mana away, but she wasn't to be dissuaded.

"So are you going to stop sneaking out or what? Priest Seto nearly had a fit when he couldn't find you this afternoon. Not even Ra's wrath could compare to him when he's in a mood."

"Don't be so disrespectful."

"Pish-posh." She perched on the table he was slumped across, arms folded under his chin and his scribing forgotten. "I still don't get what you find so fascinating about the city – at least the parts you like to visit. You never go to the upmarket districts. Where you go it's all smelly and dirty and yucky."

"People are people wherever you go. Not everyone can live in the palace."

Mana shifted so she was sitting on her hands and kicked her heels outwards in a staccato rhythm. "You haven't even apologised for getting me into trouble."

"You don't need my help to get into trouble."

"Well _that's_ ungrateful! And after I stuck my neck out for you, too. Priest Seto really yelled at me when I pretended I didn't know where you were. If Mahaad hadn't arrived and calmed him down you'd be finding pieces of me scattered around the palace grounds. If not for me, Priest Seto would have sent his own guards out to find you and they would've torn the city apart until they found you. He was convinced you'd been kidnapped."

Atem tilted his head sideways so he was looking up at her. "So whose guards was I avoiding when I made my way back here?"

"Didn't you look at their insignia?"

"I had other things on my mind."

Mana frowned. "They were Priest Isis's. I met her when I was running away … erm, I mean excusing myself from Priest Seto's presence. She asked me what he and Mahaad were arguing about. When I told her she got all serious and ordered her guards into the city without even stopping to pull those two apart the way she usually does when they're acting like squabbling children. For some reason she was convinced you were in trouble and at the marketplace."

"Well she was half right."

"Meh. Right or wrong, she's now more certain than ever that her Millennium Necklace is broken."

"A Millennium Item can't be 'broken'."

"Why not? Chariot wheels break. Horseshoes break. Stone breaks. Heck, everything in the world breaks eventually – including hearts, minds, spells and morals. Why not a Millennium Item?"

"Because …" Atem stopped. Ha! She had him there. "Because they're sacred," he said at last, as if that explained everything. "My father made them. They can't just _break_."

"Well Priest Isis disagrees. She said she's going to ask Priest Akhenaten about it. He'll probably want to examine _all_ the Items before the crowning ceremony."

Atem pressed his face against his inner arm.

Mana's voice became softer. She actually reached out to stroke his hair like she used to when they were kids and would fall asleep in each other's arms. More than once they had been brought down from trees, pulled out of giant urns, or unearthed from some other hiding place and not stir because they had exhausted themselves from playing. All her happiest memories were of Atem and Mahaad when they were children, when adult responsibilities were still a lifetime away.

Now Mahaad was a Priest, Atem was about to become Pharaoh, and as for Mana herself … well, she was locked in a struggle between becoming an adult and fighting it every step of the way. It hurt that these days there was no chance of the three of them playing like they used to. Mahaad had become so staid and serious. If she tried to curl up in Atem's arms and fall asleep now people would get _completely_ the wrong idea. Even if she and her lineage had been suitable queen material, she just didn't see Atem that way. He was more like her brother – an _annoying_ brother. Where did he get off, mooning about like this when he had set out looking so chirpy this morning? She still didn't like the idea of him running around the city like an assassination looking for somewhere to happen. Yet he had been so much happier since the last time he went out. She had been so glad to have the old Atem back she had ignored the dangers that threatened every time he stepped outside the palace without his bodyguards.

Now, however, Atem was back to looking like a hippo with a thorn in its backside and Mana had no idea why. Unfair! It wasn't even about his father this time, which left her completely stumped about what the problem could be. Atem seemed to have reconciled himself with his upcoming responsibilities after his last outing. He had come back to the palace talking about the new world he was going to create. He had even mooted the possibility of making links between the empire and the _nomad tribes_, for Ra's sake. He had been so fired up and ready to go, only to stall now and fall back into another depression. Had the enormity of the task he had set himself overwhelmed him? Mana wanted to help, but aside from what she had already been doing since Pharaoh Akhenamkhanen died, she didn't know how.

"You're truly not looking forward to the ceremony, are you?"

"Do I have to answer that?" Atem replied without raising his head.

"It'll be fun. You'll see. Once you're Pharaoh _properly_ you can start making laws and changing things around here so they're the way you want them in your 'new world'. First off, you can tell Priest Seto to lighten up and take up a hobby other than scouring the country for evil to destroy. He's completely obsessed with that. It's not healthy."

"Priest Seto is a loyal and valuable member of the court."

"And I'm not? Remember who's been covering for you all this time. You owe me and Priest Seto hates me, so it all balances out. If he has a hobby he'll stop picking on me for cluttering up the place or distracting you from your duties. He could take up bird-keeping or something. Yeah, he could have a menagerie."

Atem made a noncommittal noise.

Mana it her lower lip. "Listen, Atem, can you promise me something?"

"That depends on what it is."

"Don't go out again before the crowning ceremony. You really did nearly get caught today. Can you imagine what would happen if people found out what you've been doing? Not to mention what _I've _been doing. I'd be quartered for sure. Priest Seto would probably see it as treason or something. Plus … I worry about you. Not that I believe what Priest Isis said or anything, but she spooked me today with how certain she was that you were in trouble. I was _worried_ about you. So please, just promise me you'll stay in the palace where it's safe."

"I … I can't promise that. Mana."

She pouted. "Why not?"

"I just can't."

"If you're going to be a good Pharaoh you're going to have to come up with better answers than that." She paused, aware she may have overstepped her boundaries.

Yet Atem didn't appear to have noticed this oblique reference to his father and the legend he had to live up to. He was staring at the palms of his own hands, his expression indecipherable. Even Mana, who knew him so well, couldn't tell what he was thinking.

_Is this the way it's going to be from now on_? she wondered. _Mahaad off doing official things, Atem wrapped up in his own little world, and me left behind by both of them?_ The idea was unpleasant, as truthful ones often are. Instead of confronting it, however, she took her usual approach of deflecting her thoughts to something more agreeable. "Hey, Atem, would you like to play a game of senet?"

"I have to finish this." He leaned back to look at the papyrus before him.

"Why? As you keep telling me, you're not actually the Pharaoh yet. Take the opportunity to enjoy your freedom, _Atem_. There will be plenty of time for thinking about consequences of what you do later when you have a crown on your head. Well," she corrected, "a bigger crown than the prince one you're already wearing. For now, just enjoy yourself and do what you want. It's your life, after all."

Atem stared at her. It was a penetrating stare that actually made Mana a little uncomfortable.

"Uh, Atem? Did I say something wrong?"

"No," he said quietly. "No, you said something remarkably perceptive."

"I did? I mean, of course I did. I've been telling you for years that I'm intellectually gifted. That's why I don't have to study as hard as you – everything just comes naturally to me."

He smirked. "I'm sure. Does that include talent at senet?"

Mana grinned. Victory! "Try me. I'll massacre you like always."

"I seem to remember that _I_ won the last seventeen games we played."

"Your memory is as defective as the Millennium Necklace. C'mon and I'll prove to you who's the better player. They don't call me the queen of games for nothing."

"Nobody calls you the queen of games."

"Details, details."

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

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	8. Bloody Past, Bloody Future

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**8. Bloody Past, Bloody Future**

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"_Hey. Hey, Hondo. How are you feeling?"_

_Hondo prises his eyes open and peers blearily up at his friend. "How do you think?" he croaks, and then coughs. His throat feels dry as the skin between a camel's toes even though he's wearing his howli. _

_The face vanishes. It reappears a few moments later. "Here," Jono says, pressing something against his lips. _

_Hondo tries to push it away but stops when he tastes liquid and allows his head to be tipped back. The edge of the gourd is rimmed with sand, but even that doesn't stop him from drinking deeply. _

"_Sip, don't gulp, or you'll make yourself sick. Is that better?"_

"_Much." His throat is still raw, but he can practically feel the precious water flowing to the parts of him that need it. He's swimming in and out of consciousness, his eyelids sticking together whenever he blinks, but he feels better knowing Jono is there. The wound in his side hurt like blazes to begin with, but now it has faded to a dull but constant throb. He'd be no use if they're attacked, but Jono… Jono…_

_Hondo fades out again. When he emerges from unconsciousness it's getting dark. He blinks up at a sky not yet speckled with stars, a nail-clipping moon already high above them. His limbs are stiff from being wedged into this rock crevice – the better to keep him safe of predators arrive, Jono said when he carried him up here. Jackals are clever, but they can't climb sheer rock using handholds the way humans can; plus this place would stop him moving too much and reopening his wound. Jono had bound it tight using the linen of his own howli, but he was no healer and trying to get back to camp across open country while smelling of fresh blood would have been a bad idea._

"_Jono?" Honda calls tentatively. _

_No reply. _

"_Jono, are you there?"_

_Still no reply. _

_Apprehension prickles the back of his neck. Jono would never just leave him out here alone. He **wouldn't**. _

_Would he?_

_Voices. Hondo strains his ears, trying to discern if they're familiar or those of a rival tribe. If he calls and they're not his own people he might as well have just allowed the addax to gore the rest of him with its horns the way it did his leg. It would have been quicker than whatever death they'd choose to give him. He's heard stories of what the Sky Scourge tribe do to their captured enemies, and just being a boy of ten winters would do little to stay their hands._

_Where is Jono? Has he already been captured? Are the murdering scum at this moment flaying him alive, or attaching the ropes from around his hands and feet to four horses to quarter him? Hondo strains even harder to hear his friend's screams, but realises a moment later there's no point. Jono would never cry out. He would stay silent no matter what they did to him, and he would never, ever tell them he's not out here alone. Jono is strong and the most stubbornly loyal person Hondo has ever met. Since the day they fought over a comment Hondo's grandfather made about Jono's little sister, they have been fast friends. Even if he is being tortured Jono wouldn't let enemies know Hondo is here._

"_No…" Hondo dislodges himself. His side abruptly blazes with pain and he tumbles clumsily out of the crevice, down the scree and onto the sand below. He hits something solid but soft, raises his head and recognises the mop of sandy hair. "Jono!"_

_Jono is breathing but unconscious. His lips are dry and cracked, his nostrils caked with dust and his cheeks pinched with dehydration. Hondo suddenly realises that the water from earlier must have been their last – and Jono gave it all to him. _

"_You idiot."_

"_Did you hear that?"_

_Hondo freezes. _

"_It came from over there."_

"_Hondo? Jono?"_

_Sagging with relief, Hondo recognises his own father's voice. "Over here!" he croaks, tugging his howli out of the way so they can hear him better. "We're over here!"_

_The men from the tribe are equal parts relived, anxious and angry when they find the two boys. _

"_What in the name of all the Great Spirits were you thinking, going off alone like that?" Hondo's father demands. _

"_We were trying to hunt."_

"_You're only boys, not men. You had no business leaving without telling anyone."_

"_We just wanted to help with the food stores for when we move camp. We wanted to be useful."_

"_Useful boys don't worry their elders half to death and make them wander the desert at night looking for them. What did you try to hunt to get a wound like this – a pack of hyenas?"_

"_It was an addax –"_

"_Foolishness! Although the wound has been wrapped well enough -"_

_Hondo interrupts him. "Will Jono be all right?"_

"_As long as he doesn't have sunsickness. The boy appears to have only superficial injuries. Mostly he just needs water."_

"_Good." Hondo sags with relief once more, but this time he keeps sagging, his body folding up and his mind folding in on itself. He hears his father cry out once more, but what follows him into the dark is the image of Jono's dusty face; a reminder that his friend was willing to die to make sure Hondo lived._

_**I won't forget this**, is Hondo's final thought before the darkness claims him. **I won't forget …**_

* * *

Téana sat bolt upright. Her mind was full of pulling darkness, her teeth crunching imaginary sand and a phantom wound throbbed in her leg. The dream had been so vivid that she actually had to check to make sure there was no tourniquet there. Then she bent forward, pressing her face against the bed-linen for the few seconds of coolness it provided her hot face.

She was used to seeing fragments of the future in her dreams, or at least scraps of what might be that her inner eye had plucked from the possibilities presented by the universe. Otog always said the future was not fixed, so what they saw when they looked into it wasn't fixed either. Still, what she had just Seen was too solid to be the future.

Why had she dreamed of the past? And, more to the point, why had she dreamed about someone else's past? Wasn't it bad enough that they knew Hondo was one of those chasing them, without her gifts ramming home the full extent of the calamity?

She remembered the day Hondo's father brought the two boys back, all bloodied and weak-limbed, like the rag dollies made of cloth stuffed with goat hair that tribe children often played with. Everyone had thought they would die, but miraculously Hondo had woken and, though he moved stiffly, forced himself to walk enough to get from his own tent to Jono's. He sat beside him a full day and night, even more attentive than the women who had been set to do the same. When Jono's brow grew feverish, it was Hondo who laid damp cloth after damp cloth on it, and wiped away the sweat that soaked into his friend's bedroll. Despite his own injury, it was Hondo who pinned Jono down when he started to thrash, ad Hondo who closed his ears to Jono's insults when sunsickness made him shout and rage like he was possessed. And it was Hondo who comforted Seren when she snuck in and wept that she was about to lose her last remaining family member.

Jono was the first child to survive sunsickness for over five generations. It helped that his case wasn't as devastating at the one that had killed his mother, but afterwards he was regarded as something of a sensation. People whispered to themselves when he finally emerged from his tent, weakened but smiling. They knew that to save his friend he had fought off an addax, one of the hoofed creatures with long twisted horns that roamed about, and then kept them both alive in the wilderness. His popularity grew. When he proved to be an adept at warrior training as well, people started whispering about him being blessed by the Great Spirits themselves. It meant he had enough clout in camp to protect Seren when the time came.

Privately, Elder Goza believed Jono was a little _too_ popular. He saw Jono keeping Seren in the tribe as treason; sacrificing the good of all for his own selfish desires. Téana remembered the Vision dream she had Seen while they were travelling through the mountains, and how Elder Goza had insisted that publicly executing Jono would be _good_ for the people of the tribe. She shivered and cupped her elbows with her palms.

Jono was not saying much, but Téana knew he had to be hurting about the Elders' choice in sending Hondo after them. Usi and Makalani were bad enough, but it was Hondo's name that cut deepest. If the trio ever caught up with them, it was likely Jono would have to fight his best friend – the best friend who, as Téana had just Seen, he had once almost died for, and who had saved his life in return. The sting of Hondo's apparent betrayal had to be worse than a scorpion's tail.

For a second Téana wanted desperately to go back in time to before the strange girl with the white hair and blue eyes came into their camp, to a time before she had doubted so much and feared the very people she'd once counted as kinfolk. Or perhaps she wanted to go back further still, to when she was a child with a goat hair rag dolly and knew no truth but the one her parents taught her. But she knew her childhood lay behind her, out of reach forever. Her thoughts and feelings over the last few days were proof enough of that. At once, Ammon's face rose in her mind.

She raised her face and tipped her head back. "Are you mocking us?" she murmured to the Great Spirits. "Are our little lives just entertainment for you? Or are we just the creators of our own problems all on our own? I suppose that _would_ be more entertaining."

She knew some of the legends about the Egyptian gods, and always thought they sounded far more human than most stories about _humans_ did. The Great Spirits, by comparison, were a benign presence that rarely intervened and seemed to have no emotions like those of the mortals created from the dust of the first deserts. The Great Spirits had their own plan for the world and never let on to mortals what it might be. People just had to trust that everything happened for a reason. Now, however, Téana wondered whether the Great Spirits were really as far removed from the Egyptian gods as she had thought.

"If you really do have a plan for the world, it would be nice to know how all this heartache and uncertainty fits into it."

As ever, she received no reply.

* * *

Otog was eating when Elder Goza walked into his tent without declaring himself first. This was the height of rudeness, but when he looked at Elder Goza's hard eyes Otog recognised the barely controlled anger there. He lowered his bowl, set his hands in his lap and waited for whatever the man had to say.

Otog had little love for Elder Goza. Of all the Elders, Goza was most aggressive, most impatient, and most likely to overrule anyone who disagreed with him. He had his own ideas about how to run the tribe, and sometimes Otog wondered whether those ideas were really all that beneficial to the people who had to live by them. Still, Otog was loyal and dutiful. He didn't have to like the Elders, but he would never disrespect or lie to them – although sometimes he came close to breaking that resolve.

"I don't think you're telling us everything you could be about how to reacquire those traitors," Goza said without preamble.

Otog stared at him. He knew his stare could be unnerving. He had spent long hours as a child perfecting his ability to sit or stand perfectly still and not blink. At the time he just wanted to seem more impressive and less like a freak, but as he grew into his role as Tribe Seer the skill had proved useful in helping him to win arguments, or when he just wanted to be left alone. Téana used to creep up behind him when he wasn't looking and make loud noises, and then pout when he didn't blink. Those times he returned the gesture she nearly tore through the roof of the tent when she jumped.

Elder Goza, however, held Otog's gaze without flinching.

"I've been nothing but truthful."

"I disagree."

Otog bristled. Elder or not, he resented his integrity being called into question when he had already made sacrifices he wasn't proud of in order to maintain it. A seer was nothing without the trust of those he or she prophesied for. How could you believe anything foretold by a known liar? Otog's place within the tribe relied on his reliability, so he had always been scrupulously truthful, even when the Visions he Saw told him things that part of him wanted to keep secret.

His Visions about Téana were like that. With each one he felt the tug to lie for her growing stronger within him. Every time the runaways had evaded capture, or Usi's hunting party had lost their trail, that part of Otog cheered, and tried to hold back the next Vision that could ruin their chances at freedom.

"Have I given you some reason to doubt me, Elder?" Otog asked in a dangerous voice.

Elder Goza snorted and banged his staff. The collection of gruesome trinkets rattled, but Otog didn't break their staring match. "You were always very close to that apprentice of yours," Goza said accusingly.

"I was her teacher and her friend. It stands to reason I'd be close to her."

"Close enough to withhold any Visions you've had of her?"

An entire pack of wild dogs had nothing on Otog's rising hackles. Slowly, still not breaking Elder Goza's gaze, he stood up. He was tall for his age and thin with it. While Elder Goza wasn't a small man he was still a hair shorter than Otog.

"I have never," Otog said in a deceptively soft voice, "told anything but what I See, when I See it. If you want me to conjure her exact location on command, then you'd be better asking the stars themselves to show you. My inner eye opens and shuts according to the will of the Great Spirits, and they haven't seen fit to tell me more than she led Jono, Maibe and Seren to the mountains."

"We sent Usi to the mountains. He hasn't come back with them."

_Good. I hope that brute falls into a hole and never returns_. Otog tried to squash the thought but it rose up like a drowned corpse floating to the top of the Nile. "Then I would advise patience," he gritted, keeping his tone polite, if not exactly pleasant.

If Elder Goza cared what Otog thought of him, it would have been a first. "We break camp soon. If they're not back by then …"

_They'll be free_, cheered that rebellious part of Otog's mind. _And you won't be able to crush them under your heel anymore._ "The Great Spirits have a plan," he said instead It was his answer for everything whenever he found himself with a question he couldn't answer.

Elder Goza made a frustrated noise and banged his staff again. Otog refused to react. It was a battle of wills neither was willing to concede. Elder Goza had never conceded anything in his life, and at the moment Otog wanted nothing more than to push that staff right down his throat.

In the end the winner of their small battle was never determined. The backs of Otog's eyes began to hurt, which was unusual. He blinked several times. On the third blink he opened them to find himself looking, not at Elder Goza, but at a magnificent palace surrounded by a collection of blocky buildings. As if he was a bird flying overhead and looking down at it, Otog recognised the shape of a great city. He soared towards a balcony at the front of the palace, where a young man in a crown approached the edge and raised his hand at a tremendous crowd. Every single one of the people below bowed to him, until the streets were a carpet of down-turned faces. Otog's spirit sailed towards the young man, until he could see the sheen of his eyes, which were abruptly replaced by an image of the great Nile flooding its banks and pouring life-giving water onto the fields of Egypt.

Otog's spirit ratcheted around and re-entered his body. He blinked rapidly at Elder Goza, who didn't show a scrap of concern about his wellbeing even thought Otog was breathing hard. Waking Visions were always harder than hose given in dreams.

"What did you See?" Elder Goza demanded.

_Don't tell him!_ begged the rebellious part of Otog's mind. _Or tell him something different. Tell him you saw the tribe moving out without Téana and the others. Tell him you saw __**his**__ death. That should give him something else to think about. _It pricked like a conscious. Maybe that was what it was.

Otog's honesty batted it back like a hyena pushing aside a caracal to get at its fresh-kill. "The city of the Pharaoh in Egypt," he said, not caring much bitterness infused his tone. "That's where they've gone. They're staying until at least the start of the flooding season."

Elder Goza nodded but frowned. "I suppose we could put off moving camp for another moon to give them time to get back to us. If we sent a hawk to Usi with a picture of the Pharaoh's mark on it, he's an intelligent lad. He'd know what it meant-"

"Why do you want them back so much?" Otog suddenly demanded. "I can understand wanting to retrieve Téana, but you're also set on catching Jono and Maibe. Why? Why spend all this time and effort for an untested warrior and a woman?"

"Because they're traitors to our very way of life."

_Because they disobeyed your ruling,_ Otog translated. _Because they didn't fall into line and you want to punish them for it, and make sure everybody sees so nobody else will try to think for themselves around here_. He frowned.

Elder Goza stepped closer. "I would be careful what you say and who you say it to, Otog," he murmured. "You may be the seer, but you don't lead this tribe."

Otog fixed him with another impenetrable stare. "I know."

Satisfied, and therefore completely missing the point, Elder Goza walked out, leaving Otog alone with his conscience and guilt.

* * *

In the end, it all happened because Seren woke up one morning and saw the same with her eyes open as she did with them shut. Jono came running at her cry, Téana and Hopki on his heels. Maibe was already there, cradling the younger girl and making soothing noises as she sobbed into her hands.

_Blind by the end of the full moon_, Téana thought, remembering Otog's prophecy as she watched Jono's hands tighten into helpless fists by his sides.

In actual fact it wasn't the end of Seren's sight. After a while light mottled back into her world, but even through her relieved tears she was forced to admit she could see less than she had been able to before she went to sleep the previous night.

"It won't be long now. I promise I won't be so weepy next time. It was just a … a shock. I wasn't expecting … well, yes I was, but somehow the full moon always seemed so much further away before. And after what you said about the future not being fixed, Téana, I had hoped I'd have a little more time…" Seren trailed off miserably.

Téana immediately regretted trying to explain about how she Saw the future. If she had given Seren false hope, even unintentionally, it was the cruellest thing she could possibly have done.

"I … I don't want to stop seeing things completely," Seren said in such a heartfelt whisper that not one of their hearts didn't clench for her.

Even Hopki's expression was one of remorse, and his eyesight wasn't much better than hers. The difference was that he'd had a lifetime in which to look at the world and remember its beauty. Seren had lived only fourteen years, and most of the last few she'd spent staring at the inside of a tent because she was forbidden to step outside it.

"I want to know what the world looks like. I want more time, so I can see more things and remember them. If I could only have a little more time to put things in my memories, I could live without my sight." She sighed. "It's bad luck that we have to stay indoors so much here while the threat of Usi hangs over us. After he and his men have gone back to the tribe we'll be allowed to explore the city as much as we want, as well as the land around it, but by then I'll be …" She trailed off. Then a thought crossed her face so clearly it might as well have waved to everyone. She sat up straight, jarring her thin body out of Maibe's arms. "I'm not saying I want you to take any unnecessary risks by going out into the city for longer than is safe! I'm really easy to recognise even with a headscarf and make-up, and I know I can't go as fast as everyone else. I wouldn't ask anyone to take any more risks than they already have just so I could be sentimental -"

"Shut up."

Everyone stared at Jono.

His lips moved slightly, as if he was muttering to himself, but his eyes were shut so nobody could tell what he might be saying or thinking. When he opened them again they were full of the kind of determination that had convinced everyone he'd be certain to pass the Warrior Test until he fled the tribe.

"We'll make memories for you," he said firmly.

"But -"

"But nothing. We won't take any stupid risks, but we're going to take you to see whatever you want to see before …" Before you can't see it anymore. Before it's too late. Before you go blind. Any one would have been accurate for that unfinished sentence. "We're in the city of the Pharaoh _and_ it's his coronation soon. You'd have to be mad to want to miss that. There's going to be a parade, right?" Jono asked Hopki, who nodded.

"The crowning ceremony should have happened much earlier than this, but the court put it off so that it coincides with the celebrations to welcome the flood season. They believe it's a good omen to be crowned on such an auspicious occasion, and the new Pharaoh's reign will be one of prosperity and fruitfulness if he begins it during a celebration to honour the same gifts given to us by the Nile. The festivities should be extra spectacular. People are coming from many far-flung places to pay tribute and see the new ruler make his first formal address as Pharaoh."

"Did you hear that, Seren?" Jono gestured wildly. "Don't you want to see that?"

"I … I'd love to, but -"

"No buts. We're going to make sure you've got all the spectacular memories you want. As of now, you're officially the most important person here. Your wishes come first. Am I right?" He glared at the others as if daring them to disagree.

None of them would have even if he hadn't been eyeballing them. Maibe shot him a disapproving look, and Téana returned his glare with one of her own, as if to say 'Did you really need to confirm that?'

"I-I don't know what to say," Seren stammered. "I wasn't trying to -"

"Hush now," said Maibe. "I'll help you dress while Téana makes the food. We can discuss the finer details of where you want to go after we've eaten." There was a pause. "Jono. Hopki. May we have some privacy while we change our clothes?"

Hopki hastily backed out of the room. "A thousand apologies."

"Uh, yes. What he said." Jono followed suit, his cheeks suddenly flaming even though neither he nor Hopki were strangers to the sight of bared flesh. You couldn't live in this kind of climate without seeing it, thought tribeswomen generally kept themselves covered to prevent sores from sand. Yet for some reason the idea of it now made his face turn the colour of raw meat.

Téana got the feeling it was only one woman who had caused that reaction in him – and it wasn't herself or Seren.

* * *

"It's admirable how much you care about her."

Jono looked up. His back was against the wall and he had to twist to see who had spoken, but he didn't need to cup his hand over his eyes thanks to the shade of the building now the sun had shifted in the sky. Maibe sat beside him, both of them relishing the small respite from the heat.

"Seren?" Jono said.

"Who else?"

"I care about all of you."

"But you care most for Seren." It wasn't said acrimoniously, just matter-of-factly, as if this was the way it should be. "You gave up everything for her."

Jono rested the back of his head against the wall. "I think I would have given up more if I hadn't deserted." He frowned slightly. It was a tiny change in expression but Maibe still caught it.

"You still feel some loyalty for the tribe?"

"Don't you?"

"Not really."

"You're strange, Maibe. You talk about things no woman is supposed to talk about, think things nobody else thinks, cast aside your past and your people like the remains of a bad meal, and -"

"You'll make me blush," Maibe interrupted sarcastically.

"_And yet_," Jono went on, "you're capable of more compassion than I've ever seen from anyone. You talk about me caring for Seren, but who was holding her this morning? Who's the first one there when she wakes in the night? You gave up everything too. She looks to you now, as well as me."

"She looks to all of us for different reasons. She looks to me for comfort. She looks to Téana for guidance. She looks to Hopki for friendship. She'll always look to you for love." The conviction in Maibe's words was undeniable. Nobody argued with her for long if they knew what was good for them. For reasons he couldn't name, this one reassurance caused the tightness in Jono's chest to ease.

"We're all the family we have now," he muttered.

"You and Seren?"

"Yes." He considered for a moment. "No."

Maibe nodded, pleased with his answer. "We have to look after each other. When we move on from here we'll be relying on each other, and things will be different when Seren can't see anymore. Our progress will be slower. We _need_ Usi's party to have already returned to the tribe before we set out. We know the tribe will head north at this time of year, so we should go south."

"Hopki will miss Seren," Jono said thoughtfully.

"He misses his granddaughter more. Seren is just a placeholder for Bekah."

They'd all heard stories of the amazing Bekah by now – how she was a wonder who could have been adopted as a scribe if she'd been born a boy, how her smile was the brightest in all Egypt, how her eyes used to follow Hopki's hands as he worked on his baskets and copy what he did. What they hadn't heard much of was how she died, though they knew it was disease that had taken both her and her mother. Hopki said he knew they had gone on to a better world in the afterlife, which had led to a startling conversation about how the 'akh', the part of Egyptians they believe to be immortal, rises into the sky after death to become one with the stars. Jono had explained to an equally surprised Hopki how tribal beliefs said the 'soul' became one with the stars after they died, sometimes returning to earth to be reborn, but always ultimately returning to the heavens.

"I see we are not so different after all," Hopki had said. "Your people and mine, we have more in common than one might think."

Of course, they had a lot of differences dividing them, too. Even though they lived in Hopki's house, practically sharing his sandals with him, each of the runaways had at one time or another felt estranged from the friendly old man through no fault of his. Little things broke them from their comfortable daily patterns, reminding them sharply that this wasn't their city, and these were not their people. The painting of the goddess Bes that stared at them from the alcove whenever they entered the house was a constant reminder. The painted eyes seemed to stare hatefully at them, judging them uncultured intruders from the wasteland, until they passed out of its sight. Hopki treated it reverentially to make sure the protective goddess safeguarded his home and all those in it.

Despite his certainty that his daughter and granddaughter had gone on to enjoy eternal life in paradise, Hopki was still sad about their deaths. He had been left behind and managed to outlive not one, but two generations of his own family. His neighbours saw him as bad luck and avoided him. He was excruciatingly lonely – or at least he had been until Jono, Maibe, Téana and Seren arrived.

"I think he likes Seren for who she is, not just who she reminds him of," said Jono.

Maibe shot him a sceptical look. "You're biased. You want the whole world to love Seren as much as you do."

"Can you blame me? She hasn't had nearly enough love in her life - definitely not as much as she deserves. She deserves to have as much as there is water in the Nile."

"She's not the only one," Maibe murmured.

For a second Jono was flummoxed, until she spoke again.

"I worry about Téana."

"You do?" Jono scratched his chin in embarrassment. "Um, why?"

"We put a lot of pressure on her."

"We do?"

"Stop being stupid." The look Maibe gave him this time was scathing. "You and I gave up everything to save Seren, but so did Téana. She came with us because I asked her to, not because she was inspired to do it on her own the way we were. Then she worked hard to get us across the desert alive."

"I did too," Jono protested. He raised his hands palm-outward. "But I understand what you mean. You're saying we're as responsible for her as we are for Seren, right?"

"Wrong."

"What?"

Maibe sighed. She was quiet for a moment, her eyes looking outwards but seeing inwards at things Jono couldn't begin to guess at. "Too much pressure can cause people to crack and make bad decisions. Or to miss opportunities they'll regret afterwards. Who can know the difference when faced with a choice we don't know if we should make? We're only human, after all. We all have a breaking point – a time when logic and reason seem so much less important than they used to, and more fragile things take their place."

"You're not saying Téana doubts her abilities as a seer, are you?"

"Humph. How much do you know about the way a woman's heart works, Jono?" Maibe's question was as startling as the stare she fixed on him.

"Uh …" Jono fumbled for a reply. He picked the one he thought she wanted to hear. "The … way a man's heart works?"

Maibe frowned. "Now tell the truth. Tell me what _you _think, not the words you think would fall into my ears with fewest ripples."

Once again he searched for an answer he didn't have. The men of the tribe had always maintained that the female body and mind was feebler than the male, and that women were governed so much by their emotions they could never make good warriors because they'd want to tend every fallen warrior on the battlefield and get themselves killed by more ruthless enemies. Men were strong. Men were powerful. Men ruled women because that was the way it had always been, and there was a reason for it that went beyond tradition.

However, Jono knew if he said anything like this to Maibe she would be angry. And truth be told, since starting this trip he was beginning to have his doubts about that theory anyway. Téana coped with Visions, Seren faced the prospect of blindness with a smile, and Maibe marshalled them all in practical things like eating and bathing to stop them wallowing in their own misfortune and turning into puddles of unmotivated angst. He wondered whether Elder Goza could have done the same, or Usi, or his own dead father – or even himself, Jono, the boy who regularly lay awake wondering whether he'd be a boy forever and never attain manhood because he'd never take the Warrior Test.

"I don't know," he said at last, this time truthfully.

"It's a fickle thing," Maibe informed him. "A woman's mind can be strong, but her heart can ruin whatever foundations it lays with a single beat. Her heart sometimes thinks it _is_ her mind, and so she has two minds trying to think for her at the same time. No person cans last forever with two minds in one body, and eventually one must win out as the stronger, crushing the other." She dipped her head, staring at a particularly riveting piece of dirt next to her left sandal. "Crush the mind and the self is lost. Crush the heart and the soul is lost. Which is easiest to lose and live without? Which can repair itself over time if ripped away by fate and fortune?"

"I don't understand." Jono was genuinely confused.

Maibe sighed and rose to her feet. "When Téana and Seren return from getting the water, send them inside so I can put it in one of Hopki's urns. Then come inside yourself. People are going to ask why you aren't in the fields or working somewhere like all the other young men."

She left Jono sitting uncomfortably, going over their brief conversation and wondering what Maibe meant.

* * *

Priest Seto was furious. This in itself was not unusual, but it still chafed Isis that he felt the need to vent at her when she already knew the problem.

"Seto," she said eventually, "I am aware of your concerns. However, there is little I can do about them at this present moment."

Seto fell back onto his metaphorical haunches. As the youngest of the sacred priests he often felt that he had to prove himself, which translated to him being the most zealous amongst them. His loyalty to the Pharaoh's line was absolute and undisputed, which was valuable when facing the religious cults that gave credence to Atem's claim on the throne, but less useful when he was standing between you and the Chamber of Sacred Fire in the middle of a full rant.

The cults never used to be as powerful as they were today, and Isis reflected that Seto's reservations were actually quite valid. The increase in outside influence over the populace was worrying for a regime that focussed entirely on a single person as ruler. The pharaoh may have been the gods' avatar on earth, but belief was a tricky business that relied on maintaining the numbers of the devout. Those loyal to the king needed to eclipse those who supported the cults in order for the Pharaoh's line to remain in control, and for that he had to be seen as infallible, wise and unbeaten – someone the gods truly _would_ want ruling their chosen people. He could not be seen to weaken in any way or it might spell disaster and give the cults both a valid reason and the opportunity to wrest power from him.

Given the right incentive, the cults could acquire enough support to tear down the sacred court and bury their new pharaoh before he had a chance to establish himself. Prince Atem's ideas for a new world order weren't popular with everyone, and the sacred court had worked to keep knowledge of them to a minimum while representative of the cults were around for the crowning ceremony. They had come from far and wide, and while they toadied as custom demanded, Isis had seen the way some of their eyes gleamed with the light of greed when they saw evidence of the riches of Egypt's great empire. You couldn't fight politics with Millennium Items the same way you could use them to win a war. As a result, it was imperative that the prince and his advisors made a good impression over the coming days.

Easier said than done when Prince Atem was constantly vanishing on errands of his own that led him to seclude himself in remote parts of the palace. More than once Isis had sought him out in his lessons, only to find him poring over scrolls in the library, or walking aimlessly through the grounds when he had no real reason to be there. She worried that his resolve was not as strong as his words, and that he failed to understand the importance of the coronation. More than simply removing his prince circlet and replacing it with his father's crown, the ceremony was to be a public show of support from the various factions the whole court needed in order to avoid rebellion. Keeping good relations with rising powers, however much they didn't like those powers, was basic politics.

"You would think," Seto gritted, as if reading her mind, "our prince was completely ignorant of even basic politics, based on his behaviour."

Isis frowned. "There are some who would call such thoughts treasonous." To openly criticise the pharaoh was to call into question all he stood for and all the faith put in him by so many. Any ruler needed the support of his court to validate his authority, but a new Pharaoh needed the support of his closest followers and champions if he was to cement himself and his reign.

"Are you one of them?" Seto asked shrewdly.

Isis didn't answer the question. "I will admit," she instead admitted, "he could be more committed to his duties. But he is not yet Pharaoh."

"Only in the official sense."

"It is enough. The wisdom to rule is something that comes with time and experience, of which he has none. Yet."

"Hence his impractical schemes about peace with nations that have been at war with Egypt since the dawn of time." Seto's brows knitted so much they practically met in the middle.

"He has grand plans for his empire. And it is _his_ empire, Seto." Isis met his eyes for a moment – blue on blue, both unusual in this country where everyone was swarthy and dark-eyed. It was no wonder they had ended up in such illustrious positions. Some might say their unusual colouring had singled them out by the gods and destined them for greatness from birth. "Better he has a dream he wishes to make reality than no vision at all for the betterment of Egypt."

"You're too soft," Seto said after a sullen moment. Isis knew she had won the argument that wasn't really an argument. Seto complained, but he would follow whatever orders his new Pharaoh gave, and would give up his own life to protect him if necessary. Atem could not have wished for a better man to wield the Millennium Rod. "You bend too easily."

"And you do not bend enough – especially for one so young. The sapling that bows to the wind will last longer than the tree which remains rigid and is uprooted in a gale."

Seto snorted. He hated to be reminded of his age, though his achievement of rising so far in rank in such a short time was nothing short of phenomenal. He could not, however, seem to shake off his certainty that he was being judged as immature for his age and uneducated for his humble origins. His self-doubt showed itself in moments of pronounced egotism, wherein he overcompensated for what he thought he lacked, but did not actually lack at all. He made much of his book-learning, showed off his skills with his Millennium Item, and needled others to demonstrate their own expertise so he could prove he was better. It made him an unlikeable character even to those who knew him best, but Isis had seen through his behaviour from the very beginning.

Her tone softened. "_Prince_ Atem will be ready when the time comes. He will not betray the legacy of his father, and his father's father, and all their ancestors before him. Remember, the blood of Pharaoh Akhenamkhanen runs in his veins."

This seemed to mollify Seto – or perhaps his temper had simply run its course now he had unloaded his worries into Isis's ears. "It would still help if I could find him when I need him."

Isis actually smiled at that. "Do not worry. He is like candied dates – always in attendance at a good meal."

Seto made a disgusted noise and turned away from her. He stalked down the corridor, leaving her free to finish her journey to the Chamber of Sacred Fire, where she once more attempted to divine what she'd seen in her disturbing dream weeks earlier, and once more left again with nothing but frustration to show for her efforts.

* * *

_**To Be Continued …**_

* * *

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	9. Hard Truths

.

* * *

**8. Hard Truths**

* * *

Jono was troubled. His conversation with Maibe had left a bad taste in his mouth. He waited for Téana and Seren to return only because his conscience wouldn't let him leave until he saw them walking along the street towards the house. It wasn't that he didn't trust Téana to look after his sister; more than he didn't want to go inside yet.

He had learned to trust others with Seren's welfare. It had been surprisingly easy. Téana and Maibe each demanded respect in their own way – through thought, action and the impression of trustworthiness around them that said without words they could be trusted with his little sister's life; and it was Seren's life he was gambling with. It was all their lives, each and every day they stayed here. Jono was a true member of the Wandering People – the name all nomads called themselves, no matter their tribe. His feet itched without travel and his mind itched without new places to see and explore. Yet more than that, he was convinced that staying put made them better targets for Usi, Makalani and Hondo.

Someday he would be able to think Hondo's name without flinching; but not today.

The city gave them shelter and ways to hide that Wandering People never used. They were counting on that to buy them enough time that the hunting party would leave them alone. They were as vulnerable here as they were safe, however. Between them, Hopki and Téana had cobbled together enough information that they could try and pass for citizens of a distant province while the city filled up with visitors for the Pharaoh's coronation. Still, each day risked their lives. If they were discovered as illegal foreigners by guards, or true Egyptians took against them, it could spell disaster – punishment, slavery, even death. The idea of _any_ of the three women in his life being hurt made Jono's hands tighten into fists. He even feared for the wrath against Hopki if it came out he was harbouring suspicious 'barbarians' from the tribes not even the great Egyptian empire could subjugate.

It had crossed Jono's mind that they could be mistaken for assassins sent to murder the new ruler before he could try to conquer the true Wandering People – not his merchants or his caravans and traders, who also crossed the deserts, but those who were born, lived and died in the wilderness, away from his taxes and laws. Previous pharaohs had tried it. Jono saw no reason why this new one would be any different. Likewise, previous tribes had tried to revenge themselves on Egypt's king. Their position was precarious in these circumstances, and Jono knew they were walking a knife-edge, even if Seren smiled and laughed like knives were only for decoration, not for cutting and killing.

She babbled happily when she arrived home, tapping her stick of wood in front of her. She talked about the people around the well and their gossip about the huge celebrations that were coming to honour the new pharaoh. The city was buzzing with excitement and, unused to such things, she had caught a little of its fever. Something unrelated to the celebrations caught Jono's attention. Seren blithely mentioned that Téana had talked to someone while Seren filled her jug, and Jono looked quizzically at Téana, who shrugged.

"A friend from market. He stopped to speak to me. It would've been rude to ignore him."

"He had a nice voice," Seren said. "He talked like the nobles we sometimes see being carried on their litters. They have so many slaves I can hear their footsteps when they're practically on the other side of the city!" She giggled and took her waterjug to the cellar, which would keep the water cool for the hottest part of the day.

Jono frowned at Téana. "A noble talked to you?"

She shrugged again. "An apprentice scribe."

"Téana, it's dangerous to give away our secrets to anyone who could use them against us -"

"It was a conversation that lasted a few heartbeats," she snapped, startling him. "Hardly enough time to tell him our life story. Do I scold you when you nod hello to the field workers, or the market stallholders? There's no malice in him and I've had no Visions of misfortune for us."

Jono remembered what Maibe had said about Téana being under a lot of pressure. Deliberately, he softened his voice as much as he was able. "Just be careful. We can't afford to take unnecessary risks."

"I know that!" She stalked past him into the house. Her movements were stiff, like a cat trying to walk with back arched and hackles raised. She kept her eyes fixed forward as though trying to see to the back wall through all the other walls and rooms.

Strangely, her prickliness didn't irk Jono. Instead it calmed him, as if she had taken his worries into herself as she passed.

_This is real_, he thought. _Not a game. Maybe we __**are**__ pretending to be something we're not, but if we fail, we're dead_.

He thought of his spear, made with his own hands, and the scimitar sword fashioned for his father's father, which had passed down to Jono when his father died. It had been the only thing pulled out of the river's bloody waters, still as sharp as when Jono's father used it to slice open the neck of the hippo that fatally wounded him so it died alongside him. Jono was a warrior at heart, even if he hadn't taken the Warrior Test. He was part of the Wandering People and always would be, even if he wasn't a true tribesman anymore.

_I'm Jono Black Dragon_, he thought, using his tribal name even though he had forsaken the tribe. He still felt the pulse of the ancient beast he was named for, deep in the bloodline of his ancestors, all warriors themselves and all willing to fight to protect their loved ones. _I'm a match for anyone, anywhere, anytime._

And if anyone tried to harm those precious to him, he would treat them to the sharp edge of his sword as swiftly and easily as Maibe treated him to the sharp edge of her tongue.

* * *

Téana paused in the cellar to collect her thoughts. She had not expected to see Ammon at the well. It had panicked her, especially with Seren so close. Ammon had not seemed surprised to find her there; as though he had been waiting for her, though he couldn't have known she would fetch water today. _She _had not known it was her turn until Seren pushed a jug into her hands and announced she was going with her.

Her reaction to seeing him had been unexpected, too. After her conversation with Maibe she had been wary of her feelings for the young scribe, knowing how heavily they weighed on her task of guiding Jono, Maibe and Seren out of reach of the tribe's grasp. She'd mostly convinced herself that whatever she felt was a result of stress and anxiety about the future. You couldn't care so deeply for someone after two meetings – especially not with the various gulfs that lay between Ammon and herself. It wasn't possible, and even if it had been, it was ridiculous for her to even entertain it becoming more than infatuation. Maibe was right; she needed to keep her thoughts clear and focussed on survival and escape. There was no room for anything more than that until the threats set against them had passed.

Except that then she'd seen Ammon again – felt the touch of his hand as she watched Seren laugh with the other girls at the well like she was as Egyptian as them. In her headscarf and kohl, Seren certainly looked the part, and her voice was so soft you could barely make out her accent. Anzu had just been marvelling at her ability to blend in when someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she'd spun around the meet Ammon's extraordinary eyes. At her shocked expression his mouth had quirked a little into a half-smile, and in that moment all Téana's carefully constructed arguments fell like a tent made of papyrus in a sandstorm.

She could not put her finger on why he inspired so much in her. She knew precious little about him, had never even seen his whole face, but still … something about being with Ammon unlocked a secret part of her. She felt it uncoil whenever he was near, making her act in ways she never would have before. Talking with him made her feel like she was his equal – and, moreover, that he saw her that way and valued her as a person, as just Téana, not a seer, and not for what she could do for him.

And then there was the physical reaction he stirred. When he smiled the roots of her hair prickled. When he touched her, however briefly, every sensation in her body was cut off except for the tiny portion where his skin met hers. Even then, by the well, with layers of cloth between her shoulder and his hand, the skin there still felt his hand as clearly as if he was still resting it there. She'd never experienced anything like it before. She could better understand why the tribe ended up with babies even during times of scarcity. Téana wasn't stupid – she knew the difference between love and lust, but to feel both at the same time, and each more potently than she'd ever thought possible …

When she spotted him at the weel, she was lost before he even said a word. So when she said she couldn't stay, conscious of Seren behind her, and he suggested a meeting the next day instead, she agreed without hesitation.

"I shall look forward to it," he said sincerely. "And to you, Téana."

She spent the whole walk back deep in thought, letting Seren prattle but not listening to a word until they reached Hopki's house. There she learned Seren had been paying more attention than first appeared. Jono had been suspicious – of course he had. He was as charged with keeping them safe as she was, though his weapons could be held in his hands and hers … could not.

_He knows now_, she thought as she straightened and began climbing back up the roughly hewn steps to the upper level of the house. _Maibe knows everything and Jono and Seren know a little. It will all have to come out sometime. I can't keep them in the dark – not when they're trusting me with their lives. I can't keep lying to Ammon, either. If I tell him about my obligations, that'll leave him free to decide whether he wants to see me anymore. I'll hand the decision over to him, since apparently I never actually had a choice in the matter anyway._

Love. Such an unfamiliar concept. She understood it so very little thanks to her upbringing. She understood familial love after witnessing the bond between Jono and Seren, and the way Hopki talked about his family. She understood loving someone who wasn't blood-related as if they were – facing adversity together, as the four runaways had done, forged strong bonds of friendship that were a kind of love all their own. She understood loving to create children, too. After all, tents were only made of cloth and the camp huddled together when they pitched in unprotected places.

_Falling_ in love, however? That was the stuff of a Storyteller's fireside tales. Fantasy. Nobody actually fell in love in real life; they just fell into contentment, companionship and, sometimes, tolerance. If you loved the wife or husband you had been paired with, then so much for the better, but that was luck. More often 'love' was a self-perpetuating lie you told to keep yourself sane – you forced yourself to love someone, or told yourself you loved them, because the union was inevitable and it was easier to share your body with someone you at least didn't loathe. Falling in love just for the sake of falling in love was a naive myth that had no place in the real world.

Except that somehow, against her better judgement, Téana was fairly sure she had done just that – and it was even more terrifying than being caught by Usi and taken back to face the Elders.

* * *

Hopki caught Seren as she came up out of the cellar. "I have something for you."

"For me?" Seren was surprised. She thought it might be food, or perhaps a message, until he removed a pendant from around his neck.

"I want you to have this talisman, my dear."

"Oh, but I couldn't –"

"Nonsense. It's a gift. I daresay it's as rude to refuse a gift in your tribe as it is here. Hm?" He held it out to her, and when she was slow to find it with her fingers he lifted her hand and pressed it into her palm. "This stone came from the Eastern Desert mines of the goddess Hathor, mother of love and the protection of loved ones. It will protect you as it has protected me since my own mother gave it to me. Wear it always."

"But what about you?" Seren asked, tracing its outline with her fingertips and bringing it closer so she could see it. A magnificent chunk of turquoise had been drilled through at one end and a chain passed through the hole. It was simple by Egyptian standards of jewellery, yet even with her weak eyesight Seren could tell that to decorate the stone further would have tarnished its natural beauty.

Hopki laughed. "At my age evil spirits no longer have any want of me; and I _want _you to have it. You have become … quite precious to me, my dear. You and your companions. You have brought life and laughter back into my home when I thought there would never be any here again."

"Hopki, I don't know what to say."

"Then say nothing. Your face tells me enough." His voice was warm. He released her hand but did not step away. Seren found she didn't want him to. Hopki had never been anything but kind to her; never asked for more than her time to listen to his stories about his family. Her eyes welled at this fresh act of generosity. "That pendant was mine throughout my boyhood, but its power grows when you pass it on. It was my daughter's after me, and Bekah's after her. Now I'm giving it to you. It seems to me you need it more than my old bones do."

"Thank you."

"_I_ should be thanking _you_. Since you and your family arrived I've felt younger than I have in years." He coughed into his fist, suddenly awkward. "Now then, about dinner …"

Seren allowed him to guide her away from the stairs, but at that moment Téana appeared and Seren couldn't help showing her the gift. Hopki left them to admire it together, thinking they'd be like twittering birds over a pile of fresh seed. Téana smiled distractedly and offered to help Seren put on the pendant, but Seren could tell her mind was elsewhere and wondered what was bothering her.

"Are you all right? You've been acting strange since we went to the well. Is something wrong?"

"No," Téana said, a little quicker and sharper than necessary. Seren flinched. "I'm sorry, Seren, I didn't mean to … it's nothing, really. It's nothing."

"Téana," Seren said carefully. "If you had a Vision that was … not very nice … about what will … what _might_ … happen to us … um …" She bit her lip, unable to make herself clear because the thoughts were so dark and unpleasant. "You would tell me, wouldn't you?" _If you Saw that any of us were destined to die, you wouldn't lie to protect our feelings, would you?_

"Of course," Téana said without hesitation.

Seren had no reason to disbelieve her; yet somehow she did just that. She wrapped her hand around her new pendant. The turquoise was cool to the touch. Even though Jono would probably be upset at her wearing something connected with one of the Egyptian gods, Seren took comfort in it.

* * *

Priest Seto stood firm against Atem. It was both a heroic and a risky thing to do. Then again, that was what Priest Seto was famous for – along with a terrible temper, an ego the size of Thebes and the wherewithal to back up both of these.

"My Pharaoh, you are needed in the throne room. The representatives from - " He named a province Atem vaguely remembered from one of Kalim's maps, though he had little idea what it was famous for or how big it was. " – await an audience with you."

"They do?" He caught the slight widening of Priest Seto's eyes and cursed his mistake. "Then I shall attend them immediately. Of what matter do they wish to speak to me?"

Another slight widening of the eyes. Priest Seto's face always moved in increments. "Your coronation, my Pharaoh." His eyebrows twitched. "My Pharaoh, are you quite well?"

"Hm? Why shouldn't I be well?"

"You are acting very … imprecisely." He was choosing his words carefully. To offend the Pharaoh was to tempt punishment. Though Priest Seto was adept at offending anything with a pulse, he was also adept at staying alive.

_You mean I'm being careless_, Atem translated. He wasn't offended in the slightest; though he was irritated that someone as close to him as a sacred priest still felt he had to be so submissive. He was the same person he had been all his life and Priest Seto had known him for a good deal of that. Seto knew that Atem was the boy who once got his head caught between the branches of an olive tree and had to be cut free like an ordinary peasant. He knew Atem dreamed of creating a world of equal opportunity where deeds counted more than blood. He knew how Mana talked to Atem, and how Atem often talked back. And yet, despite all this, Priest Seto still treated him like he'd cut off his hands for speaking out of turn. He wasn't timid, but his respectfulness did skim fear. The moment he stopped calling Atem 'my Prince' his entire attitude changed. It was a nuisance.

Atem wasn't like many of his forefathers, who ruled by might and cruelty and who executed their advisors as easily as their enemies. After a childhood spent with Mana, Atem was enlightened enough to value people who were willing to tell him the truth without sycophancy. He _appreciated_ it, which was how Mana had been able to stay in the palace and keep her lackadaisical attitude despite its impropriety as they grew into their roles of prince and apprentice spell-caster – and, soon, Pharaoh and magician. Atem didn't want her to change. He had been forced by cirsumatcne to do enough of that on his own, curbing his old childish impulses and channelling his energies into becoming a king instead of a prince.

His father was not supposed to have died. It was a thought he'd had over and over. His father had been a strong man; he'd survived the war, several uprisings in far-flung provinces and even more attempts on his life by assassins from those provinces. He'd once been poisoned, yet risen from his bed three days later to attend a meeting with his six priests about grain reserves for his people. Everyone agreed that Pharaoh Akhenamkhanen had been the finest ruler in over a millennia, as bright and shining as the stars themselves.

Yet like all bright stars he had fallen to earth and proved his mortality. Unlike a falling star, however, Akhenamkhanen had ended his life in a sickbed, weak and enfeebled by the mysterious illness that sapped his strength and left him a haggard shell of his former glory. Nobody could understand it, and no healer could cure whatever had taken hold of him after he returned from a mysterious trip with his son – a trip about which Atem was sworn to secrecy, which involved some kind of repentance and begging with the gods for Atem's life. Atem's recollection of his father's decline after that was hazy, riddled with pockets of un-princely melancholy and the knowledge that his father was repenting for a crime he hadn't shared the details of with anyone. Mostly Atem remembered the gut-wrenching horror when Siamun came to him with an expression that told him the worst.

_My father was not supposed to die_, Atem thought every day from then on. _He sacrificed himself for another. He took on their sins as his own. But why? Who made the Millennium Items he died for? Why were the gods so vengeful about them?_

The Millennium Pyramid was not yet a heavy weight against Atem's chest, but it was still a weight on his heart and mind. It and the other Millennium Items were the reason Egypt had survived the Great War, but somehow they had still cost the country its king. Were its people really worth such a sacrifice? Atem had begun to doubt the fairness of the exchange, and so started his trips into the city to remind himself of what his father had died for – the ordinary people who needed protecting.

"There are two types of people in this world, Atem," Pharaoh Akhenamkhanen had said when Atem was still a small child and thought adults could fix anything. "The strong and the weak. What defines us is not which of these we fit into, but how we conduct ourselves within them. The weak man who shows courage is stronger than the strong man who shows cowardice. The man who protects the weak is stronger than the man who saves only himself. Remember, my son: the king is for the people, and their sins are his sins, just as his sins are theirs. Each pays for the other's in blood and tears. One day, when you become Pharaoh, you will understand what it means to be the recipient of your people's sins and the protector of their innocence and wellbeing. For now, however, you should know that whatever decision a Pharaoh makes, it is the people who ultimately make it a reality, and so it is his responsibility to defend them just as they defend Egypt in battle. If you are to be a good ruler, you must always remember that you are both more and less than the people."

His father's advice had rung in Atem's ears since the man's death. The 'someday' Akhenamkhanen spoke of had come far too soon, when Atem was still only sixteen. He wanted to be the great ruler his father had been, or at least not disgrace Akhenamkhanen's name through his own failures as Pharaoh, but this kind of lofty goal brought with it doubt and uncertainty.

"_If you are to be a good ruler, you must always remember that you are both more and less than the people."_

So he had set off to find out the meaning behind Akhenamkhanen's wisdom, and to reassure himself that he _could_ be the kind of Pharaoh who wasn't swallowed up by the shadows cast inside his father's giant footprints.

What Atem found instead was a nomad girl who made him question so much about himself that it was no wonder he'd been a little distracted lately.

Atem wasn't naïve. He knew his marriage would be political when it came, probably to seal peace relations with neighbouring countries, or to secure trading routes through one of their more ferocious borderlands. It was possible he may even have to endure several wives to achieve these things, though only one would be entitled to the role of Queen. He'd been aware of this since childhood, since he had no cousins to preserve the bloodline, and so had always looked on marriage as a necessity to be endured more than enjoyed. He had even begun to dread the prospect of fastening himself to some unknown princess, imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios. The one that occurred most often was one in which her father foisted his spoiled, rich daughter onto Atem, who would spend the rest of his days lumbered with a queen who knew nothing more than courtly life and the status quo. She would be demanding and lazy, caring only about trivial things like banquets and the size of her palanquin. Compared to Mana's fire and Priest Isis's wisdom, this nightmare scenario princess had the same effect on Atem as being buried up to his neck in sand and then having a basket of fire ants dumped on his head, so they would slowly eat away at his flesh until there was nothing left of him except bare bone.

Téana wasn't anything like his nightmare princess. True, she wasn't a princess at all, but she didn't talk like a peasant. She had passion and opinions she wasn't afraid to voice. She spoke with insight, and she had the gall to not only disagree with him, but to argue her viewpoint. True, she didn't know he was pharaoh, but she'd figured out he was more than a commoner and _still_ treated him the same way. After the way the court had been changing around him, Atem found her blunt sincerity invigorating, and the fact she was a foreigner didn't deter him at all. Many would probably have seen the new Pharaoh's fondness for a 'filthy nomad' as a betrayal of everything he was supposed to stand for, but not even that was enough to make him forget Téana's soft curves and blue eyes. She fascinated him in ways he couldn't put names to, and he wondered whether it was normal to want to spend time with one person and one person only – especially in light of his coronation. He was supposed to be concentrating on that, but instead he sat watching his courtiers' mouths move while replaying every word Téana had ever said, memorising them until he felt dizzy.

"_You are both more and less than the people."_

He was besotted like any commoner and it was a wonderful feeling.

The only dark cloud on the horizon was 'Ammon'. Téana knew the apprentice scribe, not the pharaoh. She treated Ammon as an equal, but king of all Egypt was as far above a scribe as the sun is above a campfire. Could she act the same way around Atem? Was it even worth finding out? She would eventually leave the city and he would never see her again. He should just enjoy the time he had left with her and not spoil it or risk cutting short her desire to see him. He fought with himself over whether to reveal his true name to her, to have her know him for _him_. It could end any affection she had for him – he had lied to her, and the lie was not a small one. He might not be _her_ king, but he was still a king – or would be as soon as the crowning ceremony was over.

"My Pharaoh?"

Not that Priest Seto let such things stand in the way of already calling Atem by his new title.

Atem gritted his teeth. "I am distracted by matters of state," he said simply. "But my mind is only focussed on the twigs of branches from the same tree from which your own thoughts grow. Rest assured, Seto, I will not falter in this, nor in any other task set before me."

Priest Seto nodded once, a quick jerk of his head that said so much more for him than a speech. He was willing to believe Atem's explanation for now, and would abide by it – even if he disliked the fact that Atem had not using his full title. "I shall make the representatives ready for your arrival, my Pharaoh." He bowed and backed away.

Atem waited until he was out of sight before sighing. All this bowing and scraping made him long to be back with Téana. He hadn't realised how much it all exhausted him until he spent time with someone who didn't do it. But such was the way of things. He had the duties of a ruler now, and one of those was entertaining boring diplomats and making them feel welcome when you wanted to drop-kick them onto a chariot out of the city.

Movement caught his eye. He turned his head and saw a figure lurking in the shadows of a nearby corridor. Instantly on the alert, he straightened his back and instinctively cupped the Millennium Puzzle in his hands. It was a far more potent weapon than any sword or dagger.

"Who's there?"

"Someone waiting for Priest Seto to go away."

Atem blinked. "Mana?" The figure was so large it hadn't even occurred to him it might be her. "What do you want? Shouldn't you be at lessons with Mahaad?"

"Yes and no. I should be, and I will be, just as soon as I fix my current situation."

"Current …?" Atem narrowed his eyes. "Come into the light where I can see you."

"No."

"Mana-"

"I know, Atem."

Her statement startling him, as did her tone. There was no playfulness in it. She sounded deadly serious.

"You know what?"

"I know why you've been going into the city alone."

Atem cast around, but there seemed nobody listening. Still, the walls had ears. He drew closer, but she stopped him with a sharp command.

"Stop where you are!"

He halted. "Mana, what is the matter with you? You sound hardly like yourself and have yet to accost me with one of your embraces."

"I followed you into the city, Atem," Mana said in that same sober voice. It sounded so wrong coming from her.

"I did not see you."

"You wouldn't have. I was in disguise." Finally she moved, stepping out into the main corridor. Atem gasped involuntarily. "I know, I'm hideous. I cast the enchantment well enough; I just can't make it go away!" She spoke with her own voice, but the face that looked back at Atem was wrinkled and fat. Her clothes strained across an enormous bosom, stomach and backside, and from her head tumbled ratty black twists of hair shot through with grey. Her eyes were dull with frustration. She gripped her baton tightly in one wizened hand.

"Mana …"

"I'll fix it eventually. I always do. I just don't want to talk about it. I want to talk about you and that girl I saw you with at the well."

"You were at the well?"

"I even fetched my own urn of water for authenticity." She fixed him with a penetrating stare. "Who is she? I knew there had to be a reason why you were suddenly in such good spirits despite the coronation getting closer. She's not noble. Judging by her accent, I'd say she'd not even _Egyptian_. Am I wrong?"

Atem met her stare. He had known Mana all his life. She was almost impossible to lie to unless by omission. "You are not wrong."

Mana threw up her hands. "_Atem_! Do you know how much trouble this will cause? This is worse than _anything _I've ever done – and I've done some really messy things when my magic goes wrong."

"Like trapping yourself in the body of an old woman?"

She glared at him. "We're not discussing that right now. We're discussing this … whatever her name is."

"Téana," he said softly.

"Téana? What kind of name is that?"

"A tribal name. She's one of the Wandering People."

"What?" Mana blinked. "You mean she's a nomad?"

"I mean what I said; otherwise I would not have said it."

"Wandering People, nomads, it's all the same thing."

"No, it is not."

Mana stared at him for a long moment. "How long?"

"Enough time."

"Enough for what?"

He said nothing.

Mana shut her eyes. "Ohhhh … this is all my fault. If I hadn't covered for you and helped you sneak out … this is so, so awful. Priest Seto is going to have my head on a _platter_! Not to mention Priest Akhnadin. _He'll_ probably use the Millennium Eye to make me see waking nightmares for the rest of my days. And Mahaad – _Mahaad_! He'll probably strip me of all my magic before I have chance to explain."

"You're overreacting –"

"Am I? _Am I?_" Mana's voice was shrill. It was such a strange counterpoint to her appearance that it actually silenced Atem. "I saw the way you looked at her today. I saw the way she looked at you, too. You don't look the way you two did unless there's something beneath the surface. Atem, she's a _nomad_. There's no way you'd ever be allowed to -"

"I know," Atem interrupted sharply. "You think that I don't? I am fully aware of the situation. _Painfully_ aware," he added, because this was Mana and he could say things to her that he couldn't to other people.

His outburst silenced Mana. When she spoke again her voice was not so strident. "Do you care for her?"

Atem dropped his eyes, focussing on his own soft calfskin slippers. "Very much."

"How much is 'very much'?"

"More than I ever expected to. As you say, she's not Egyptian. By rights, I should pay her as little mind as anyone I pass on the street when out walking secretly. And yet …" He searched for the words. He was trained in speech-making, but nothing would come that pleased him enough to say out loud. Eventually he just made a frustrated noise and clenched a fist. "I am aware of my own foolishness, Mana. There's no need to point it out."

"You've been so much happier lately," Mana said quietly. "I thought you were just getting used to the idea of being Pharaoh, but it was her, wasn't it?"

He nodded.

"I like you better happy. You're boring when you're sad." She gave a weak laugh. Not even she believed in it enough to maintain it more than a handful of seconds. "You make me sad when you're sad," she amended, soft and a little hesitant. "After your father's illness … I've wanted to put a smile back on your face for so long. I thought you were going to do something drastic after he died. It was why I helped you when you wanted to do this crazy scheme in the first place. I hate seeing you that way, Atem, but this ... this is more than I bargained for. You and some nobody off the street … you're going to be the _pharaoh_. Pharaohs don't marry commoners. Or …" Her eyes widened. "Or are you thinking about her as a concubine instead of a wife?"

"No," he said emphatically.

"Are you thinking about her as a wife?

"I … don't know."

He had, several times actually, but any daydreams inevitably ran up against two facts: the myth of 'Ammon' and Téana's impending flight from the city. He was Pharaoh – or as near as made little difference. He could try to force the issue; oppose tradition and raise a peasant up to the level of royalty. It would certainly be a decisive gesture in support of his new world equality. How could he ask the people to believe in his ideas if he wasn't willing to put them into practise himself? Yet there was more at stake than simple tradition. The sacred court, his own tenure as king, the various factions looking to find chinks in his armour so they could pour their poison into his reign … It was a lot more complicated than it first seemed. Yet despite all this, all he had to do was think of Téana's face and his mind became focussed on one thing: He didn't want to give her up.

"Atem," Mana sighed, "this is beyond anything I can think about. You're talking about breaking consecrated laws. That's heresy. You'd be challenging practically the whole court before you even got as far as speaking to her again – because you know they wouldn't agree to you marrying a nomad. It would give too much power to tribes that feel they don't owe any allegiance to Egypt. There'd be no gain in it, as far as the priests can see."

"Since when did you become so politically-minded?"

"Since you decided not to be."

"There wouldn't be any connection with the Wandering People. Téana is a fugitive seer. She ran away from her tribe and has been hiding in the city until it's safe to go back into the wilderness. She's not fond of the city."

"She's leaving?" Before she could stop it, relief washed across Mana's face. Her wrinkles and the hairs protruding from her many moles and warts couldn't conceal the shift in her expression. "It's probably for the best. That way you don't have to deal with any tricky political situations and everybody can be happy."

"Except that I wouldn't be."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't want her to leave."

Mana stared anxiously at him. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying that I … don't want her to leave." He hadn't even known that was what he truly wanted until he said it. Now, however, it stayed in the middle of his thoughts like a horse that had sat down and refused to walk anymore. It was _true_. More than anything at this moment, Atem wanted Téana to stay. He wanted to go on meeting with her, talking to her, learning all about her. He wanted to take all she told him and make it a part of himself, as though by doing so he could make her a part of him too.

Mana watched him carefully. She raised a hand and slapped it against her forehead, dragging her palm down the middle of her face. "You're smitten."

"Perhaps I am."

"Being smitten only lasts a little while. When it wears off you get all the problems of reality that were creeping up on you while you were busy being smitten."

"How on earth would you know something like that?"

"You don't go down to the kitchen much, do you?" She scratched her chin. "No, that's a stupid question. You can sneak into the city without being caught but you can't get down to the lower levels of your own palace without some attendant waylaying you. I only went because I was practising my invisibility enactment. The servants never knew I was there, but it was very interesting listening to them talk when they thought none of the nobility were around."

Atem's expression darkened. "I cannot help the idle chitchat of others. I am beholden to no-one."

Mana didn't invest much confidence in her expression. "Does she know who you are?"

"No," he admitted. "She thinks I am an apprentice scribe called Ammon."

"Ammon? Hidden?" Mana laughed. "And you, a measly scribe?"

"The learning and intelligence of the scribes is hardly 'measly'."

"Maybe, but _your_ intelligence is cause for question. It won't work, Atem. It _can't_."

Instead of answering, or even acknowledging the things he'd already thought about a dozen times, Atem gave in to the foolishness that afflicted the young, the impetuous and those in love – none of whom had more than a fingernail scraping of good sense. Something had occurred to him.

"We shall see."

Neither of them noticed the dark figure as it slid away down the corridor, all but invisible in the gloom caused by Mana self-consciously dousing the torches.

* * *

**_To Be Continued ..._**


	10. The Truth Will Out

**.**

* * *

**9. The Truth Will Out**

* * *

Téana had heard that the city sometimes had processions run through it, but had never realised how ostentatious they were – or how sprawling. It wasn't a simple affair limited to the few who could be bothered to go and watch. The morning after she saw Ammon at the well the streets were choked with people, all flocking in the same direction. The celebratory atmosphere was impossible to ignore. Usually frugal Egyptians cavorted wearing every scrap of jewellery they owned. Street-sellers hawked foods she had never even heard of. Everywhere she went, people whooped and sent up prayers praising the world and everything in it. It was like someone had crushed poppy seeds, burned them and wafted the fumes into everyone's houses.

Hopki explained that the statues of the gods from the temple were being escorted through the city by a convoy of guards, priests and representatives of the pharaoh's sacred court. The idea was that by having them circle the city, the gods would be pleased enough to bless the new king's reign and smile upon the rest of Egypt during his tenure. The installation of new pharaoh was an important event and nothing was being left to chance. For weeks all prayers in the temple had asked for sacred signs to show that the gods sanctioned the claim to the throne by the old pharaoh's son. Commoners weren't allowed inside the temple, so until the procession started nobody had known whether or not those prayers were successful. Now it seemed the coronation could go ahead safe in the knowledge that the gods approved. It was a time to finally end the time of mourning after the death of the old king.

"They put a lot of stock in some old statues," Jono remarked when Hopki had gone to fetch his sandals so he could join in with the celebrations. His old feet were callused from going barefoot for years, but his legs had begun to bow outward and his arches had collapsed, making it difficult for him to walk without support. "I mean, they're just carved rocks."

"You're still thinking like a tribesman," Seren said, surprising them all. "You have to start thinking like an Egyptian. To them, those statues aren't just rocks; they're the symbols of the gods here in the mortal world. It's like having a little piece of their gods with them all the time."

"Gods, goddesses, idols, temples – pah," Jono said contemptuously. "The Great Spirits are in everything, no matter where you go. You don't need to say some specially-worded prayers for them to hear you."

"_Still_ thinking like a tribesman." Seren shook her head. "You need to make more effort to fit in here, Big Brother."

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean forgetting all our own traditions and beliefs, Seren."

"I didn't say that. I said you need to understand how the minds of city-folk work if you're ever going to stop feeling like an outsider."

Jono blinked at her. "Seren … we _are_ outsiders."

Seren looked down at her feet. She had her hand around the turquoise pendant. There was an uncomfortable moment wherein Maibe and Téana exchanged looks and Jono just stared at his sister.

"Seren, you do remember we'll be moving on from here eventually, don't you?" Jono asked. "This isn't our home."

Sadly, Seren nodded. "I understand. We're Wandering People. Home is wherever you can see a horizon to follow, but I … I like it here. I like having a place to come back to that doesn't move. I like having a cellar and a kitchen and a bedroom. I like living with Hopki and learning about Egyptian customs and things. People here don't treat me like I'm different just because I'm not as strong as them." She blushed. "When I fell down the other day and dropped my stick, a woman I didn't even know came to help me up. She gave me some of her water and stayed with me until I stopped feeling dizzy. That never would have happened in the tribe. I know it's not a huge thing to base an argument on, but the Egyptians in the city have treated me better over the last moon than our own people did my whole life."

"Seren …" Jono trailed off, leaving an even more uncomfortable silence.

Téana was rocked by the realisation that Seren didn't want to leave the city even when it was safe to do so. This wasn't something she had factored into their plans – nor was the little voice that cheered when she brushed against the thought that maybe they _could_ stay. They had a place to live, after all, and Hopki could claim they were distant relatives of some kind. The tribe rarely came down into built-up areas unless trading. If they lost their accents, learned how to fit in and didn't stand out too much, it _could_ work. Plus the city was where Ammon lived, of course. She felt heat rising into her cheeks and instantly shook it away.

"Women have more rights here, I've noticed," Maibe said suddenly.

Jono looked up. "What?"

"In the city. Maybe in all of Egypt. They treat their women better here than in the tribe with those outdated Elders in control. You can do things here that you can't out there." She gestured expansively.

Jono narrowed his eyes. "Does that mean you want to stay, too?" There was no mistaking the thinly veiled accusation in his voice, as if the idea offended him.

"No, it means I've observed that women have more rights here." Maibe shrugged like this wasn't important to her. "Certainly more than the tribe ever afforded us."

Jono looked at Téana. "I suppose you want to stay as well?"

Téana was taken aback. "Um …"

"Big Brother, please don't be upset." Seren touched his elbow. Her voice was quavery. She hated making him angry.

The irritation visibly drained out of him. He couldn't deny Seren anything. "I'm not upset, just surprised. I didn't know you felt like this." He turned to face her. "Do you really want to forget the tribe that much?"

Not one of them could have blamed her if she had. They were each painfully aware of all Seren had suffered at the hands of tradition and the customs of their people. Still, to run away from the tribe was different than forgetting all about it – that was like splitting open their chests and pulling out their organs to see firsthand which they could live without.

Seren shook her head. "Not forget. I'm still one of the Wandering People in my heart, but maybe … I'd like to be something else as well."

"Egyptian," Jono said with resignation. He obviously couldn't forget that Egypt had not always been kind to the Wandering People. He had gone through the training of a warrior, after all, even if he had never taken the Warrior Test, and the training indoctrinated young men to distrust anyone beyond their own people.

"No, something new." Seren smiled. "I want to be Seren, sister of Jono, Maibe and Téana. That's who I want to be. We're a tribe all of our own now, so we should make our own customs and decide for ourselves what we believe in."

That made much more sense than any of them wanted to admit. Seren was the youngest, the weakest and, in many ways, the most innocent amongst them, but it seemed she was also the wisest in her own way.

"I don't think it's quite that simple, Seren," said Maibe. "But it's a lovely idea. Giving up our identities and rebuilding them from scratch, on the other hand … that might be a little too much for the first task of our new tribe. We'd have to start a bit smaller." She looked pointedly at Jono. "Like learning that not all Egyptian rituals should be mocked just because they talk about gods we don't believe in."

Jono muttered something, but reluctantly agreed with her.

* * *

"You're coming too?"

"'Too'? Were you planning to go without us?"

Téana stared at Jono. "No," she lied.

"Seren wants to see the procession for herself." He didn't need to say any more than that. Seren had experienced another blind spell and Jono was aggressive in his commitment to making sure she had memories to sustain her when her sight failed completely. "Hopki's going, but it's safer if we all go together."

Téana thought fast. "I don't really want to go."

"You don't?"

"No. I think I'll stay here today. If the house is silent I can concentrate and perhaps meditate a little. Maybe a Vision will come to me in those conditions."

She didn't need to say any more to convince him. Jono made sure Maibe and Seren covered their faces with veils in case they were spotted, put on a headscarf of his own to cover his sandy hair, and hustled the other three out, leaving Téana to contend with her thoughts alone.

She sat on the roof, apparently trying to commune with the Great Spirits but really watching the others' progress down the street. She waited until they were out of sight. Then she waited a bit longer to give them enough time to properly embed themselves in the crowd. Hopki had said he wanted to go to the far end of the city where the crowds would be thinner, so they wouldn't have to fight to get to the front and would be able to see the procession as it passed by. Still, there would be few places along the route that weren't teeming with people.

When she couldn't wait any longer Téana rose, tidied herself and also left the house. At the doorway she paused to look at the painting of Bes and the small offering Hopki had placed in the shallow dish beneath it.

"Do you really guard this home and those in it?" Téana wondered aloud. "Even us?"

The painting said nothing, only stared at her with unremitting eyes. Téana found it difficult to reconcile these lines of ink with the goddess they were supposed to represent. Seren's turquoise pendant popped into her head and she sighed. Processions and ceremonies could be as elaborate as they liked; people would always find most comfort in the simplest things.

Ammon had said to meet him by the well again. He hadn't known about the procession. How could he, when nobody had been told until this morning when the temple opened its doors to announce the gods approved of the new pharaoh? A mob of revellers had the well in a stranglehold when Téana arrived. She hovered around the edge, tugging at the edges of her headscarf. It was a nervous gesture that only increased when people brushed past, laughing and calling to each other like children even though they had to be thrice her age. There were so _many_ of them. How was she supposed to spot Ammon like this?

In the end she didn't have to.

"Téana." He crept up behind her – or maybe he walked normally and she just didn't hear his footsteps against the roar of the crowd. Either way, she whirled to greet him with a noise not unlike a goat that had been kicked up the backside.

"Ammon!"

"An interesting greeting." His hood was pulled further over his head today, casting shadows over his face and obscuring much of it. "It is good to see you. I had thought you would not come."

"I … had to wait for an opportunity to leave the house." She drew in a breath. She had decided to tell him everything and leave him to do what he would with the information. Not even Seren's admission that she wanted to stay in the city had changed her mind. If she truly felt as strongly about Ammon as she thought she did then she couldn't lie to him anymore. His reaction would prove whether it was, in fact, love or just infatuation. Perhaps it was cowardly, but the idea of taking great risks and lying to Jono and Seren only to discover her 'love' was as fleeting as a Storyteller's tale terrified her. She had so much lose no matter what she did. "Ammon, I have to tell you something."

Ammon cut her off. "I do not mean to silence you undeservedly, but I would rather we moved to a less crowded area." He pulled on his hood as if trying to stretch the linen to cover his face even more.

Téana frowned. "Won't your master let you out even to see the procession?"

"What?"

"Your master." Maybe she had used the wrong word. At his silence she added, "The scribe you're apprenticed to."

"Oh. No, I am meant to be making preparations for my, um, graduation to the status of full scribe, but I left to see you."

Téana was both touched and concerned. "You mustn't keep dodging your duties on my account, Ammon. You'll get into trouble."

"Any amount of trouble is worth the risk if the prize is seeing you."

Her face flooded with colour. "Ammon, I-I …"

"Hush. I, too, have something important I wish to say to you, but not here." He glanced around. "Follow me." He held out his hand for her to take. "I shall find us safer spot where we may talk privately."

"In a city swarming with people on the day of a procession?"

His smile turned her knees to water. "You would be surprised."

* * *

The sacred court was in uproar. People and rumours sped through the halls of the palace faster than fire through dry tinder.

"The Pharaoh cannot be found!" slaves hissed to one another, able to talk freely when they were alone.

"He is missing."

"He has been kidnapped."

"Kidnapping? From under the noses of the six priests?"

"There is no trace of him anywhere. Priest Mahaad went to fetch him from his studies and found him missing."

"I heard his scrolls and stylus were scattered on the floor like leaves after a storm."

"Kidnapped! The Pharoah has been kidnapped!"

"But if the pharaoh is missing … what does this mean for us?"

"Egypt is doomed!"

"Do the dignitaries know? What will they do when they find out?"

"Priest Isis is searching for him even as we speak, but her Millennium Necklace is clouded."

"Priest Seto wants to send soldiers into the city."

"How would they know where to look?"

"There would be chaos if he drew attention to this misfortune."

"The Pharaoh is gone!"

"Please, Two Ladies, preserve us!"

"The prince is missing!"

"May the gods save us all from this disaster!"

One person who _was _listening to the mutterings of the slaves really wished they had something else to talk about. Mana heard all this and shut her eyes in disappointed frustration. "Oh, Atem, you _didn't_."

* * *

"It occurs to me that I don't really know anything about you, apart from your profession and your name." Téana nervously linked her hands behind her back to stop herself picking the skin around her fingernails raw. She wasn't sure why she had said it, but the silence between them as they walked made her uncomfortable. They usually talked, or if they were quiet there was none of this strange tension she sensed now.

Perhaps it was the procession. Perhaps knowing the statues of the gods had left the temple and were in the city weighed heavily on him. She didn't know enough about Egyptian religion to know how this event might affect people. Maybe he was worried they would fall and smash. Whatever the reason, Ammon was clearly preoccupied as he led her through the city.

"Some things are … difficult to share," he said now.

"Oh, right. Everybody has things they'd rather not share. That's all right. I didn't mean to -"

"Not you. You have shown great faith and shared everything with me. You have answered every question I have ever asked of you."

_Not strictly true. _"My mother always said I run off at the mouth too much," Téana babbled. "Before I was apprenticed to Otog, that is. She and my father didn't really speak to me after that. I think they were a little bit scared of me, actually. Girls aren't meant to be seers, so they had no idea how to react or what to do with me until it was decided I would live in Otog's tent and learn from him. After that they were happy to leave me alone and just wave to me at whole-tribe gatherings. I walked with Otog when we moved camp and they walked at the back with my new sister."

"You lived with a man?"

"Not that way. Otog was more like a brother, although most of the time _he_ seemed like he didn't know what to make of me, either. He never treated me badly and he was a good teacher even though he'd never done it before."

Ammon was silent for a while. "My mother died bringing me into the world," he said softly.

"Oh, Ammon, I didn't mean for you to -"

He held up a hand. "No, it is only right that you should know something of me apart from my profession and my name." His smile was meant to be reassuring, but it was so thin it did little to encourage her. "I knew nothing of my mother except what my father told me. He always talked of her with the most respect and admiration. He said he loved her as soon as he met her and knew it to be love even though they had never spoken a word to each other. Of all his wives, she was the most exalted. My … nursemaid, I suppose you could say. A man called Siamun who helped to raise me; he told me that my father's heart never recovered from her loss and that he devoted himself to protecting me because I resembled her. He poured his hopes from the future into me and would have no other children after me. It was … rather stifling, actually, but I was a dutiful son."

"Was?"

"My father died. Quite recently."

"Ammon … I don't know what to say."

"Now there is a first." He gave her another thin smile.

Téana's heart ached, but her mind snagged like torn linen on something he had said. "_All _his wives?"

"Yes," Ammon said blithely, as if this was no great thing to him. "But my mother was his Great Wife and all others came second to her, even after death. My father should have chosen another Great Wife from amongst them but he refused."

"I didn't realise Egyptians took more than one wife."

"Only some Egyptians."

"In my tribe it was one man for one woman until death. The Elders had to give permission for the wife or husband who survived to remarry, and the Elders chose who it had to be." She wanted to ask whether Egyptians were allowed to choose who they married for themselves but the woprds stuck in her throat.

"I am afraid I must once more ask you a question now, Téana," Ammon admitted. "What would happen to you if you returned to your tribe?"

"I'm not sure. I'd be punished, of course. Women who disobey are always punished. I'm too valuable to kill, but probably I'd be marked so everyone knew what I'd done as soon as they looked at me."

"Marked?"

She pulled a face and gestured vaguely to her face. "Others have to be able to see if you've done wrong. Men have to know you're tainted so they don't compete for you."

"You mean scarred?" Ammon asked darkly.

She nodded. "I might be given to one of the men who recaptured me, to bear some children for him. He'd have gained great honour in the Elders' eyes and that would be a fitting reward, since I'm a seer. My movements would definitely be restricted to stop me running away again, but broken limbs are difficult if the tribe intends to move on soon. There'd be no point in going to all the trouble to bring me back only to injure me so badly I died on the journey to our new encampment, so I might be guarded, or chained to something inside my new husband's tent and then attached to him during the journey. That's all a worst case scenario, of course." At Ammon's unblinking stare, she grew uncomfortable. "I've, ah, had time to think about this. A lot."

"Téana, do you trust me?"

She was surprised at the unexpected question. "Of course."

"Then I will ask you to trust me when I say I have a way to preserve your safety against those who pursue you. I have a way to stop these terrible things from happening, even if they were to attempt to capture you."

She was even more surprised at this, especially since he lapsed into silence again, as if interrogating the next words he wanted to say. Ever since they met today, Ammon had been jumpy but serious. His eyes cast around constantly, until she wondered whether his master could be in more than one place at once. She looked around too, but since she didn't know what the man looked like she couldn't be of much help as Ammon led her through the backstreets until they reached a secluded place that was ridiculously near the marketplace, considering how quiet it was. The procession would pass right through the marketplace, but you would never have known how near they were by the quiet around them.

"You certainly do know all the ins and outs of this city, Ammon," she said needlessly.

"I am used to sneaking around in it and getting from place to place without being seen."

"I'm surprised your master has kept you around long enough to graduate. It sounds like you spend more time escaping than attending to your studies."

"I have been a good student all my life. It is only of late that I have become restless enough to flee my duties – though I always return to them and I always perform to the utmost of my abilities after I do. Soon, however, I will have no time at all for this sort of thing and will devote my life to those labours."

"Oh." Téana's heart sank. If the life of a scribe was so demanding, she may never see him again even if they did remain in the city. Her thoughts, made gloomy by what her life would be like back in the tribe, darkened further.

"That is why I must speak with you now. I may not have another chance to ask you this."

Something in his tone made her wary. The decisiveness bespoke a decision finally reached. The backs of her arms and neck prickled. "About what?"

"You say you cannot stay in the city after the threat of your pursuers has passed because you do not feel safe in this place."

"I … might have said something like that."

"But I do not wish you to leave." He was so blunt about it, holding her gaze and watching her reaction. "I would like you to stay here. With me."

Forget prickling; now the back of her neck felt like it was trying to concertina her spine by tightening all the skin along it. Her shoulders rose. A sour taste appeared in her mouth.

"To that end, I have a way to achieve what you desire and what I desire. Become my wife. I am of marriageable age and my family is wealthy enough that I would not mind forgoing a dowry. My household has the means to keep you safe against anyone who would do you harm, no matter who they are or how strong they might be. By doing this you could maintain your safety for the rest of your days and never have to worry about returning to your tribe. And by becoming your husband, I could keep you with me for always. I confess, Téana, that I have … deep feelings for you – feelings I did not ask for, that I find difficult to comprehend, but which I cannot deny. I finally understand what my father meant when he talked about how he loved my mother. I am unsure how you feel about me, but even if you do not love me in return I would not withdraw my offer. No matter what, I wish you to be safe."

Téana was flabbergasted. His _wife_? After she had spent so much time and effort convincing herself that even a passing romance was a flight of fancy? It was as if the Great Spirits had collaborated with whatever Egyptian god controlled cruel practical jokes. To hear that Ammon loved her … it was too much to handle. She opened and shut her mouth but no words emerged.

"With the death of my father I am the head of my family," Ammon said when she didn't answer. "You could become a part of it no matter what anybody else said. I will not lie; there would be opposition, but my status would allow me to overrule any dissent."

"You'd do that for me?" she managed to say.

Ammon's expression cleared. "Without hesitation."

"But why? Why would you go to so much trouble?"

"It may seem strange, but I do believe I love you, Téana. Marriage here is not always arranged by our elders, as in your tribe. Some of us may choose our wives and husbands, and accept or reject their proposals."

"You … love me?"

"I am not well-versed in love and do not know if our conversations and meetings can be counted as courtship, but I cannot deny this. It is as close to the feeling as I have ever come. I cannot divest myself of it, nor do I want to. It is you I think of when I wake and you I think of before I sleep. You have done things to my mind and occupy a place inside it that has never been explored before – though I would like to explore it more in future."

"B-But … I'm nobody. You're a scribe – a _noble_. You couldn't possibly … I'm not even Egyptian. I'm sure there are laws against this sort of thing."

"I am above such laws."

She shook her head. "That's infatuation talking. I may not be a native to this city or this country, but I know nobody's above the law. You're as bound to it as … as the Ppharaoh himself!"

Was it her imagination, or did he flinch at that? Téana barely registered it. She was too bust trying to calm the conflicting feelings fighting for supremacy inside her. She was simultaneously delighted, terrified, dismayed and numb. Only Ammon's solemn face told her he wasn't joking.

"Infatuation?" he repeated. "Is that what you believe this is?"

"I can't speak for you, Ammon. Only you know the true extent of your own feelings."

"And _your_ feelings?"

"My feelings?"

"That is what I said. What are your feelings, Téana? What do you think of me?"

"I … I don't … I can't …" Recalling Otog's instructions on how to calm herself down when agitated, Téana shut her eyes and tried to blank her mind. She may as well have tried to put out the sun by throwing a jug of water on it. Her thoughts skipped around like head-butting goat kids and her chest fluttered wildly. "I'm not worth what you're suggesting, Ammon."

"Excuse me?"

"I haven't been entirely truthful with you."

"I do not understand. You have always been open with me, whether it is proper or not. That is one of the things I admire about you. You are not as bound by social propriety as so many women I talk to. You feel before you think."

"Not always."

Keeping her eyes shut, she told him about Jono, Maibe and Seren; about how they had fled the tribe together and how they were relying on her to keep them safe now they had taken such a huge leap into the unknown. She blurted everything so he wouldn't have a chance to interrupt. When she had finished she waited for his response.

"And this is significant … how?"

His reaction startled her. "I lied to you."

"You omitted certain truths. That is not the same as lying." On this point he was emphatic – almost strangely so.

"A-and I can't leave them, even to marry you. We're … our own little tribe now," she stuttered, thinking about what Seren had said. "We need each other. I couldn't make myself happy and abandon them."

"But that is easily rectified."

"It is?"

"Yes. Simply claim them as your blood-kin and they, too, will become a part of my household. They will become as protected as you."

Téana gaped. "You'd be willing to take on three extra people?"

"If keeping them safe ensured your acceptance, then yes, I would. It is a tiny price to pay to have you by my side."

"Ammon … you hardly know anything about me. Not really."

"I know enough."

"Do you? Do you really?"

"Are there any more secret travelling companions I should know about?"

Her chuckle was mirthless. "No, just those three."

"Then I see no reason why you cannot become my wife. If you agree to it, of course."

"But I could be a terrible person! You've spent only a handful of hours with me. You can't just sign your life away based on _that_."

"You are not a terrible person," Ammon said so seriously that she clamped her teeth shut, biting down on her next comment. "I said I know enough. That is one thing I do know. You did not lie to me. You tried to protect those you care about. You did not know whether I meant them harm and acted accordingly. That is commendable and only proves the impression I already had of you: that you are a kind and good person with enough compassion inside her to encompass all of Egypt."

She didn't know what to make of this remark.

"Answer me simply, Téana. Do you feel anything for me except friendship?"

"I … yes." The confession fell from her lips like an unlocked shackle. "I feel more than friendship for you."

Something flashed across Ammon's face: Hope? Relief? Pleasure? It was hard to tell amidst the folds of his hood. He stepped closer, his voice low. "Would you become my wife if you could?"

"Ammon -"

"Yes or no?" The authoritative note was unmistakable. It was the mark of nobility.

She couldn't. She _couldn't_. Not without asking the others first. Not without … but her stomach was churning, her palms were sweaty and she _wanted _this. She did. To spend her life with Ammon? It was more than she could have dreamed of, but … she _couldn't_! Why couldn't life be simpler? She squeezed her eyes shut again, trying desperately to calm her thoughts. Her eyeballs actually stung. She realised belatedly that frustrated tears were beaded at their corners.

Suddenly, something touched the back of her head. Her eyes flew open in time to see Ammon's eyes far close than expected, and getting close. She didn't even have time to protest before his mouth was against hers. It was a clumsy movement. Their teeth clashed, sending a shockwave through her gums. Then her lips softened against his and he tilted his head to one side so his noses didn't bump into hers. Instinctively, Téana tilted her head in the opposite direction. She was a little taller than Ammon but somehow that didn't matter. After all, she didn't have feet anymore. She didn't have hands or arms, either; or a swirling stomach, a tight chest, or knees threatening to go out from under her. All that was left was her mouth, which registered Ammon's like something in a dream. His lips were dry until her own mouth moistened them. Up close he smelled of some kind of spice and oil that had been rubbed into his skin. When he breathed out through his nose she felt the air against her face; and when he brought his other hand up to her cheek it was super-sensitive to his touch.

"I can't just become one of your wives," she murmured when they broke apart. "I wouldn't want to share you."

"Then I would make you my Great Wife," he murmured back. "I would have no need of others if I had you." He kissed her again, far more forcefully.

A dull but insistent throb started low in Téana's belly. Ammon's hands tugged at her headscarf until it fluttered to the ground and he was running his fingers through her hair. She tried to do the same to him, pushing back his hood. He resisted a little, but his hands were occupied so she managed despite the protest mumbled into her mouth. Her eyes were closed but she felt the coarseness of his hair – his _own_ hair, not the slick falseness of a wig.

What they were doing was improper in the extreme, especially in public where anyone could happen across them, but they couldn't stop. Around them the world had slowed and would not speed up again until they were ready to let go of each other. The hesitant feelings they had each been questioning were confirmed once and for all with that kiss.

Téana felt like she was caught in the few seconds between sleep and waking when you're not sure whether the world is a dream or not. Yet the feeling went on and on, and the press of Ammon's fingertips against her scalp, along her jaw, thumbing the corner of her eye and smearing the kohl there – that was all too real. He was a physical anchor to the present and everything that lived there.

_Everything._

Reluctantly, she pushed against his shoulders. "Ammon, stop."

Equally reluctantly, he did. "What is it?"

She looked at him. This was the first time she had ever seen him with his hood down. His hair had been loosely tied back, but a number of curious spikes had worked their way free of – helped by her own hands. He had hair of colours that should not have been possible, which lent him an ethereal air when combined with his eyes. The overall effect was like one of the wall paintings of gods and goddesses around the city.

Téana took a steadying breath. Her lips still tingled. "I can't, Ammon. I can't marry you."

He frowned. "Why not?"

"Because … because …" _Because the thought terrifies me. Because we're so different. Because your world isn't my world. Because saying yes and then having it taken away again when people find out and stop us would be just too painful_. "Just … because."

"That is not a real answer."

"Your family -"

"Did you not hear me? I said I am head of my household. Nobody in it could challenge me if I do not wish it."

"They'd never accept me, let alone Jono, Maibe and Seren as well. When you first met me you called me a barbarian. I may not know much about this city, but I know that isn't an unusual view of the Wandering People. I've been listening to people ever since I got here. I know most of them only think of tribes like mine as useful for slaves, and you'd never be allowed to marry a slave."

"I do not care what they think. They will do as they are told." Ammon was vehement. "And you are not a slave."

"I could have been. Would you still think of me the same way if I had been?"

"That is not a question that can be answered. You are not a slave. You are Téana, former seer of the Black Dragon tribe. You can become Egyptian, or as close as makes no difference."

"What if I don't want to?"

"Why are you insisting on difficulties where they can be overcome?"

"I'm just trying to point out that things are far more complicated than you want to believe they are."

"I love you. That is all I need to know. You did not kiss like you want me to leave you alone. You kiss like you feel the same way I do."

"I …" Téana couldn't deny it.

"I have the means to overcome any difficulty and if you do not wish to become Egyptian and adopt all our ways I will not insist on it."

"But other -"

"I love _you_. To change you would be to lose what made you run across my mind like a wild horse from morning until dusk. This is what I want, Téana. My household cannot deny me this, not now."

"Not after losing your father?"

"Not after everything that has happened. Not after the sacrifice my father made for them – and me. Not after …" He let out a sharp exhalation, not quite a sigh but close. "You say yourself that you are not versed in the ways of this city, but you are also unaware of the history of this land beyond how it affected your tribe. That much I have learned as we have talked. You do not know of the great war that claimed so many lives – soldiers from other countries who raided outlying villages, killed the men and took the women and children. Huge battles where the ground ran red with blood from our soldiers' severed hands, stacked high in piles that rotted in the sun while their murderers counted them. I was only a baby, but the wars remained as I grew. My earliest memories are full of that stench blowing in on the evening breeze, when the heat of midday had done its worst. My family suffered during that time. The years following my mother's death were nothing but bloodshed and tears, leaving my father no time to grieve. He just wanted the war to be over but it seemed never-ending. Siamun told me of the long nights he spent staring at nothing by the sky, as if searching for a solution in the stars, but none ever came."

Téana didn't know what to say. This confession was so unexpected it rocked her like a club to the head.

"I devoted himself to my father as I grew," Ammon went on. "I wished to be the perfect son to him; to follow in his footsteps and make him proud of me. Most of all I wanted to take his pain away. I wished for there to be a perfect world where men did not have to set aside their own grief to contend with the aftermath of other men's cruelty. He did so much, but I could not save him at the last. All my dreams and great plans to make a world where he could be happy, thwarted by sickness and even more death."

"Ammon -"

"So no, Téana, my household cannot deny me this happiness. I will not let them. I am the master there, not them, and sometimes it would benefit them to remember that." Suddenly it was as if all the fight went out of him. His shoulders slumped and the skin around his eyes and mouth was tight with grief. "Please. I will fight for you. I will make a home for you. I will honour you and your kinfolk. Please, Téana. I … I do not wish to lose you."

She bit her lip; clasped her hands; felt the sensation of his fingers still pressing into her skin and remembered the feeling of _rightness_ that had come when he kissed her. She tried not to think about the tribe and the protection Ammon offered from it. She didn't want bribery to have any place in this. instead she thought about what Ammon had told her about his life, how he had helped her fit in on that first day, how he didn't mind her disagreeing with him – even encouraged it – and sought her out whenever he was in the city. She took another steadying breath as Otog's words returned to her.

"_Sometimes a seer must interpret his – or her-" A smile; that half-lidded thing that came when he was teasing her. "-gifts, but a seer is still a person, so sometimes it is the mind or the heart that must be interpreted. The trick to being a __**good**__ seer is knowing how to do both – how to be a person as well as an instrument for the tribe. Not everybody gets it right." Another smile, this one a little sad and a lot frustrated. "Not even me, but that never leaves this tent. I don't want anyone saying that living with a girl has made me go soft."_

Her decision was made. She opened her mouth to speak – but fell to her knees as images detonated inside her skull.

"Téana!"

* * *

_She is a great bird, swooping through the sky. She is a cloud, roiling and churning in an unnatural wind. She is a jackal listening to the hoof-beats of many horses at full gallop. She is a cobra, coiled in its rocky alcove but feeling the vibrations of passing animals that have given themselves up to the hands of men. _

_She is a horse, heading towards the mountains alone, not bearing her usual rider but a human-man-boy with a message that he gabbles to three other human-man-boys. _

_She is a grain of sand on the breeze, snorted into a giant nostril and then out again, whirling and eddying like a dancer trying to match her steps to music that was too fast. She loses herself amidst the sweating flanks and pounding hooves, and then halts as the herd of horses and strange, gimlet-eyed riders stare down at what they've found. She is air and water and land and flesh – bone and sinew and blood and skin. She is nothing, because this hasn't happened yet, and with this realisation she whirls away._

_The sky is dark, though she can't tell whether from storm clouds or night. No stars shine, but the world is still lit by a flickering orange glow. A figure rises in front of her, clasping a scimitar. Its hilt is of a recognisable tribal design. The blade gleams, reflecting flames and wide, terrified eyes that stare but don't see. _

_She screams, reaches to stop the blade falling and then whirls away again. _

_Pursued, always pursued, but this time by shadows. A dark mass of stone rises before her like a pyramid, but much smaller. The feel of something small but important in her hand, rounded at one end and inscribed with symbols her fingers can feel but her mind not understand. The steady climb of stone steps, one foot in front of the other – important-essential-got-to-have-to-need-to-must-__**see-**__him …_

"Téana!"

_She whirls away again, thrown off balance by the deluge of images that streak past. It's as if her face has been torn off and thrown ahead of the rest of her down a dark tunnel. She catches glimpses of possible futures, tiny squares in a wider mosaic – one green, one blue, one red, one yellow and glowing like the sun at night. Within the dazzling yellow light a face appears, framed by heavy eyebrows and a cruel sneering mouth. The owner thrusts out his arms and catches her face, cups it in his hands like a gourd, brings it to his own to whisper softly. _

"_Found you."_

_Then he yanks his hands in opposite directions and she screams as her whole self is torn up the middle, separating into two – the one who flies and dreams and Sees, and the one who walks and worries and only sees. He drops the two halves of her face, which land with a wet noise like a newly gutted fish. Impossibly, she stares through eyes looking in opposite directions and sees the approach of the gimlet-eyed riders again, who catch her up in their gallop and toss her from hoof to hoof until she is screaming again, this time at the familiar heads and severed hands tied to one saddle – trophies to take back as proof of a mission , Seren and Maibe stare sightlessly._

"Téana, stop screaming!"

_The rider in the saddle to which they are attached smiles down at her. Usi grins. "Tag. You're it, little seer girl."_

_Her own scream follows her into the dark._

* * *

Téana stumbled to her feet. She was completely disoriented, barely knowing left from right, or up from down. When she blinked, the insides of her eyelids seemed tattooed with what she had just Seen, and her stomach churned in response.

_No, no, no, no …_

A sudden need to find Jono, Maibe and Seren burned like a torch doused with the foul smelling fuel 'petroleum', which thieves used when raiding tombs. A thief-tribe once tried to trade it for Black Dragon goats, but the Elders refused because it was smelly and the fumes made people ill.

Téana shook her head. The mind does strange things when under extreme stress. Hers sought out innocuous memories and facts to conceal and disguise what her inner eye kept throwing up. The tribe wasn't her family anymore. She had run away from them. The tribe was … was full of enemies … dangerous … couldn't go back, not ever … there was so much blood …

Focus! She had to focus. She had to … what? Find Jono, Maibe and Seren, that was what.

Why?

The blood. The _blood_! It was their blood. Only she could stop it from happening – only she could keep them safe. Nothing else mattered. _Nothing_.

But what about …?

_Nothing_!

Warm lips and hands in her hair. Blood and kicked up hooves. The smell of spices and oil recently rubbed into Ammon's skin. Usi's mocking face. Everything blurred together in her mind until she could barely extricate them from each other. Blood and sand and laughter and someone's mouth against hers, all so important, but in different ways she was in no fit state to distinguish between.

Her thoughts bounced around like peas on a drum skin, half-convincing her she _really was_ a horse, or a cobra, or a mass of floating nothingness that only ended when she crashed into walls, or fell over and proved she still had a body. The sensations were fleeting. Her mind reeled like a flock of disturbed sparrows. Sparrows were bad luck, weren't they? Egyptians believed they were a bad omen. So did the tribe.

_Not so very different after all …_

"Téana!"

_Who …?_

The Vision was the worst she had ever experienced. Her skin felt like it had been seared by fire. When she blinked she saw grisly afterimages that made her feet speed up. Try as she might, the severed heads and hands danced on the edge of her mind. She blocked them out and changed from stumbling to running. Everything had been driven from her thoughts except the Vision and finding the others, until she was little more than a puppet motivated only by two things.

"What are you doing? Téana? Téana!"

"I have to … find them …" she murmured to herself. "Where … have to … they're coming. Great Spirits save us; they know somehow… _he_ knows somehow … not safe anymore … they're coming _here_ …"

The sound of voices and the press of bodies on all sides. She was vaguely aware of people shouting – at her? – but she couldn't make out the words and didn't care enough to try.

"Jono? Maibe?" she called.

Something smacked into her; maybe an elbow or a foot from someone she'd shoved aside. She tripped but stayed on her feet and kept going with elbows like thorns stabbing into anyone who got in her way. She had to find them. She had to find them _now_ – to warn them, but also to reassure herself that they were all right.

"Seren! Answer me!"

"Oof!"

"Rude girl. Get back, you."

"Leave her alone," shouted someone behind her – so familiar and … warmth flooded Téana's chest and her mouth tingled, but not even that could stop her pressing on until she found Seren and the others.

"Hopki! Seren! Where are you? Maibe! Jono, answer me!"

"Hey!"

"Look out!"

Finally, one of the crowd took exception to her rudeness and knocked her back. She fell awkwardly and landed hard on her arm, twisting it under herself and crying out. Instantly, something was standing between her and the man who had struck her. Téana looked up, holding her cheek. She … knew this something. No, some_one. _A person. Violet eyes and … and something about a question …

Warm lips and hands in her hair. Blood and kicked up hooves. The smell of spices and oil recently rubbed into the skin. Usi's mocking face. Blood and sand and laughter and someone's mouth against hers. Was any of that real, or all from her second sight? She felt sick, her stomach bubbling like a pot of water left too long over a fire.

She stared hard at the figure protecting her, trying to slot her thoughts back into order and focus on him as an anchor. His hood was up again, but from her position she could see a few blond strands hanging around his face, plus a clear view of his thunderous expression.

The man who had struck her looked ready to strike her rescuer as well, but the woman next to him caught his arm and hissed into his ear. The man looked again an expression of pure terror crossed his face. He fell to his knees, pressing his nose into the floor and throwing his arms over his head. Téana looked around. The whole crowd was doing it. Not one person looked up after they had prostrated themselves. A few were even trembling. The procession of the gods' statues was exposed, but not one person wanted to watch it anymore.

Téana stared in wonder. Was this another Vision? They appeared to be bowing to … but that couldn't be right. Was this symbolism? When she raised her gaze her rescuer looked dismayed. He met her eyes and she read a question in them, but not clearly enough to know what exactly he was asking her.

_Focus_, she told herself. _I have to focus. I can't afford to waste time. Jono, Maibe, Seren –_

One of the mounted figures in the procession called out and her world tilted sharply on its axis again.

"Your majesty!"

_What?_

Her mouth became a perfect 'o' as shadows blossomed behind her rescuer. They rose around him, encircling and stroking him like a lover's hands, though he didn't seem aware of them. The shadows swelled, towering over him and all the buildings around them. It seemed they would never stop growing. As they grew they became hard-edged – not like shadows at all, but flesh. A gaping red mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth appeared, followed by armoured blue fists and shoulders as broad as the sky itself. Golden wings and claws stood out from the swirling darkness, and a pair of flaming wings framed the figure, casting his face in an unearthly glow. The beak of some huge, fiery bird loomed over his head and reached for her, evaporating when it had almost reached her face and she could see her whole body one only the size of its lower jaw.

Terror filled Téana. "M-monster," she whimpered, pointing at the last fading beast.

Another Vision. Another warning? If only she could think clearly! She closed her eyes and shook her head, pressing her face into the floor to try and order her thoughts – and so completely missed the look of shock and disappointment that crossed her rescuer's face.

* * *

Jono may have had reservations about sharing in celebrations for something he didn't believe in, but even he couldn't deny he was having as good time. People laughed and danced wherever they went. When they finally found places to wait for the priests to go past he was smiling as widely as Seren. The smell of good food filled the air. Maibe briefly disappeared and returned with a collection of sweets that made him suck his fingers to get the last scrap of taste. Say what you would about Egyptians and their overly complicated ideas about how the world worked; they still made great honey bread.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" he asked Seren at regular intervals.

"It's wonderful! I can hear and smell so many things. Everyone sounds so happy – and the statues haven't even gone past yet!"

"You'll have prime position to see them when they do," Jono said smugly. He had used a number of dirty tricks to get them to the front but he wasn't remorseful in the slightest if it benefited her.

"Yes," Seren said after a moment. "I will."

"I can hardly believe these are the same people who …" Maibe broke off with a curious frown. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Jono downed the last of his bread and followed the line of Maibe's finger.

"Some kind of commotion."

"Probably another fight," Jono said dismissively. There had been a couple between people who had drunk too much, but generally they subsided into play-fighting and rolling about because they couldn't throw a punch without falling over. "Nothing to worry about as long as it doesn't concern us."

However, it quickly became clear that this was no drunken tussle. Like ripples in a full jug after dropping a pebble into it, the crowd fell to their knees. Frantic whispering reached Jono's ears.

"It can't be him."

"He wouldn't have left the palace."

"Maybe he's part of the parade."

"Why would he be in the crowd instead of on horseback, or on a litter?"

"Maybe it's a double."

"Is it a hoax?"

"Fine then, _you _get to your feet if you're so sure it's not him."

"I didn't say that!"

"Then keep your head down and shut up."

"It's not possible …"

"Perhaps …"

"Maybe …"

"Surely …"

Jono didn't understand what was going on until Hopki yanked hard on his arm. "On your knees! Hurry, boy, or you'll find you won't have a neck to crane anymore."

"What?" Maibe and Seren were already down. Jono knelt next to them, bewildered, and hissed, "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Maibe hissed back. "But the nail that sticks up is quickly hammered down." It was an old saying from the tribe. Jono must have heard it a thousand times before, yet hearing it now rankled. The familiar words seemed out of place and reminded him of a life he was working to distance himself from in his mind.

"Your majesty!" barked a voice from the procession, which had rounded the corner just before the disturbance and was now halted, like a rock with a river of bent heads flowing around it.

Jono's annoyance was quickly forgotten. "The Pharaoh's here?"

"That would certainly explain why we're all kissing the ground," Maibe muttered.

Hopki was muttering something in a low monotone. Jono tried to listen but the old man spoke so quickly that his words blended together. Jono could only make out the odd word and from that construed he was praying and that the pharaoh – if that was who it really was – shouldn't have been there without a lot more pomp and circumstance.

Two horses peeled away from the procession. People parted to let them through. One bore a man with a fine black wig, the other a bald man in a long robe. Each rode with the reins folded into one hand, indicating either extremely docile horses or years of riding experience. Judging by their refined accents and the way the bald man's horse rolled its eyes at the crowd, Jono guessed it was the second choice. The upper classes could afford to learn advanced horsemanship in all their spare time. In their free hands each of the men held a bizarre item that were cast, it seemed, from solid gold – a pair of scales and a giant ankh.

The man with the ankh stopped in front of the only figure in the entire marketplace who had not bowed. It was easy to tell why. Everyone was bowing _to_ him. His head and face were obscured but he held himself nobly against the force of the bald man's stare. Could it really be …?

The hooded figure and the bald man exchanged words Jono was too far away to hear. The hooded figure gestured with both arms, throwing them wide as if to encompass the whole city. Then he pointed at the halted statues and their irritated but genuflecting priests. The bald man traded a look with his companion and pressed the ankh to his chest in a saddle-bound bow of his own. Then he held out his hand. Evidently he expected the hooded figure to take it and became agitated when nothing happened. The figure turned to advance on one of the people on the ground behind him but doing so removed him from Jono's line of sight.

"It _is_ the new Pharaoh," Hopki whispered feverishly. "Dressed in rags and standing among the commoners like he has nothing. Ra protect us from this scandal!"

His words momentarily distracted Jono from what was going on but everyone's attention was instantly yanked back to the scene playing out on the other side of the marketplace.

The bald man's horse shied suddenly, throwing up its head and trying to back away. The people behind it were too frozen by the Pharaoh to move and the bald man had to wrench at the reins to keep them from being trampled. He didn't curse, as Jono might have done in the same position, but his face showed frustration that matched the tautness of his arms and shoulders. Still trying to control the panicky horse, he said something to the hooded figure, who nodded resignedly and clambered into the saddle behind the man with the golden scales. The hooded face kept turning back towards the crowd as if on a string. Even as they trotted away he wasn't concentrating on where they were going, and seemed as uninterested in the gods' statues as Jono.

When he and the man with the scales had left the marketplace the bald man wheeled his horse around and raised his voice. "Citizens, do not let his disturbance spoil your celebrations! Your ruler has walked amongst you to test your loyalty to the gods when you think the royal eye is not watching, and he has found you devout. Raises your heads, your voices and your spirits and make merry, for tomorrow he will be crowned true Pharaoh over all Egypt and you, his people, will reap the rewards bestowed by the gods at this time – the very gods whose images you now see presented to you! Raise your heads and rejoice!"

A hesitant cheer went up. The boldest amongst them did lift their heads from the ground. One man, so eager to prove his faithfulness it made him reckless, jumped to his feet and let out a joyous whoop. It startled the horse, which whinnied and pawed the ground. People fell back as it pranced from side to side. It jerked its neck up and down as if trying to head-butt people like a wild ram.

Jono had seen a horse do something like this before. The tribe preferred camels, but they had traded horses a few times and he and Hondo had crouched nearby as children, watching them and wishing they could ride one. Hondo's father tried to dissuade them by saying sometimes horses got 'spooked' and lost their reason, which made them far more dangerous animals to ride than camels. This horse was agitated and Jono knew that agitation would feed itself until it became fear, and a scared animal will do anything to get away from what it believes to be a threat. This horse obviously thought the crowd, or something in it, meant it harm. It wasn't far off being 'spooked'.

Since others were already on their feet Jono took the opportunity to rise and grab Seren's wrist. "Come on, before that thing runs wild." He tried to grab Maibe's hand too but she slipped through his grasp and stood up on her own, then helped Hopki to get up.

"The king," Hopki kept muttering. "Here, and nobody noticed. The Pharaoh himself and not one person able to see his glory …"

"I thought he wasn't Pharaoh until he was crowned tomorrow," Jono said as they made their way through the rising bodies.

"He is the only ruler, coronation or not," Hopki replied.

"I think that means it's okay to call him Pharaoh already since nobody else is alive to claim the title," said Maibe. She had a hand on Hopki's shoulder to steady him in case he had risen to his feet too quickly. She was always doing little things like that, Jono noticed, though she never made a big deal out of it. It was as if she didn't want people to notice when she was being nice.

A cry went up when they had nearly reached the safety of the side-streets. The horse had finally spooked and plunged forward. The bald man thrust his golden ankh into his waistband and took up the reins with both hands. He directed the horse so it would follow its nose out of the crowd and back into the avenue of empty space reserved for the procession. The horse turned several times and bucked, catching the shoulder of someone behind it. The victim flew through the air and fresh cries sounded when the body landed and didn't get up again. The bald man was too busy quieting his horse and trying to get it away from the crowd to realise what damage it had already done.

Jono realised. Without her headscarf, it was easy to recognise the sweep of brown hair cut in an unfashionable style for the city.

"Téana!"

* * *

_To Be Continued ..._

* * *

.


End file.
